Liberal Arts Blog —Tour of the US (IX) St. Louis, Missouri: Baseball and Hockey, Yes! Football and Basketball, No!
Liberal Arts Blog — Saturday is Sports, Dance, Fitness, and All Things Physical Day
Today’s Topic: Tour of the US (IX) St. Louis, Missouri: Baseball and Hockey, Yes! Football and Basketball, No!
After the New York Yankees, the St. Louis Cardinals have won more World Series Championships than any other team! That would be 11 (versus the Yankees at 27 and the Red Sox and Athletics tied at 9.)
The St. Louis Blues (hockey) won the 2019 Stanley Cup and “appeared in three championship finals from 1968 to 1970, and made 25 consecutive playoff appearances from 1979–80 to 2003–04.”
Despite the reputation of St. Louis as a “great sports town,” there is no St. Louis team in the NFL (football) or the NBA (basketball). And is unlikely to get one ever because of its relative population decline. Between 1870 and 1920. St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the US (after New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia) now it is the 21st largest and headed down the ranking.
This is the ninth in a series that has so far taken us to: Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Kansas City. Coming up: Dallas, Pittsburgh, Miami, Philadelphia, and Seattle.
The premise of the series is that the more you know about the more topics more people care most about the greater your chance of having a meaningful conversation and a moment of shared joy. And the more beautiful the world becomes.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CARDINALS WORLD SERIES WINS; 1926, 1931,1934,1942,1944, 1946,1964,1967,1982, 1986, 2011 (total = 11) Below is Rogers Hornsby (1896–1963) one of only two Major League baseball players to win the hitting Triple Crown (League leading batting average, home runs, and runs batted in). The only other winner was Ted Williams (of the Red Sox).
1. The team has also won 19 National League pennants (the third highest after the Dodgers with 24 and the San Francisco Giants with 23, and just ahead of the Atlanta Braves with 18 and the Chicago Cubs with 17.
2. “The Cardinals have exceeded the attendance total of 3 million every season from 2004 to 2019. Every season from 2013 to 2019, the Cardinals finished second among MLB franchises in home game attendance, surpassed only by the Los Angeles Dodgers each season. The Cardinals since 1987 have surpassed 3 million in 25 years, with the 25th season on September 18, 2023.”
STAN MUSIAL “Stan the Man,” (below) ALBERT PUJOLS, “The Machine” (“La Maquina”)
1. Stan Musial (1920–2013) was a 24X All Star (a record he shares with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays), and a 3X World Champion. He was also a 7X National League batting champion. Granting him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, President Barack Obama called Musial: “An icon untarnished, a beloved pillar of the community, a gentleman you’d want your kids to emulate.”
2. Albert Pujols (1944 — ) played for the Cardinals from 2001 to 2011 and was a 2X World Champion (2006,2011) and 3X National League MVP). After playing for the Los Angeles Angels from 2012 to 2021 and the Dodgers in 2021, he returned to the Cardinals in 2022 and “moved into second place all-time career RBIs and total bases and became the fourthly player with 700 career home runs.”
ST. LOUIS BLUES (ice hockey), named after the W.C. Handy song “St. Louis Blues” — most play-off appearances after the “Original Six” (Montreal Canadians, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, and the New York Rangers). Below: Bernie Federko (1956 — ) the greatest Blue of all time, or does Brett Hull deserve the title?
1. The Blues are one of the six “expansion teams” of 1967. The others are the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Minnesota North Stars, the Los Angeles Kings, the California Seals, and the Philadelphia Flyers.
2. “Bernie Federko is the best Blues player in history. For non-Blues fans, this may seem as a surprise. But for Blues fans, it’s anything but. Federko is the leader in nearly every major offensive category the blues have. Federko is first in games played (927); points (1,073), and assists (721). He is second in goals (352); hat tricks (11), power-play goals (116), and fourth in game winning goals (40). Federko’s playoff stats are just as impressive, as he is second in points (101), goals (35), and first in assists (66). But what really makes Federko the best player in Blues’ history is that he kept the team from moving to Saskatoon. The Blues had been sold, and if the team continued to spiral downward, they would move.
But because of the success that Federko and his teammates saw, the team went on a climb in the standings. Federko was the best two-way player the Blues had, and he was awarded the captaincy in his last season as a Blue.”
3. Brett Hull, son of hockey legend Bob Hull, is by many measures the best Blue of all time: first in goals (527), hat tricks (27), game-winning goals (70), and power play goals (195). “His playoff play was great too: 137 points (first), and 67 goals (first), and 50 assists (second).” He and his father were “the first father-son combination to each score either of 600 goals or 1,000 career points in the NHL. Hull’s nickname, “the Golden Brett” is a referenfce to his father’s nickname of “the Golden Jet.” (photo below is of father and son).
POST SCRIPT — for a little background on the history, geography, architecture, and food of St. Louis, see the last link below — a Miscellaneous Day post from August 23, 2023.
St. Louis Cardinals — Wikipedia
Triple Crown (baseball) — Wikipedia
Liberal Arts Blog — Saint Louis. Missouri — Geography, History, Architecture, Food
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
For the last four years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
#3 Israel-Palestine HandoutYOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to sports, dance, fitness. Or the coolest thing you learned about Sports, Dance, of Fitness in your life — whether on the field, on the dance floor or in the gym, whether from a coach, a parent, a friend, or just your own experimentation.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. Or even change their life. It’s perhaps a chance to put into words something you have never articulated before. And to cement in your own memory something cool you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
