The History of the St. Louis Cardinals: Every Era, from the First Season to Today
The Cardinals story in eras, from the 1880s Browns and four straight pennants through Rickey, Musial, Gibson, Herzog, La Russa and Pujols to the end of the Molina and Wainwright years.
The St. Louis Cardinals have won 12 World Series, more than any other National League club, and 23 pennants if the franchise's years in the American Association are counted. Through the 2025 season the historical record shows a record of 11,363 wins and 10,486 losses over 144 seasons, a winning percentage of .520. The reason is not one dynasty but many separate peaks spread across a century and a half: the 1880s Browns, the Rickey and Hornsby clubs of the 1920s, the Gashouse Gang, the Musial teams of the 1940s, Gibson and Brock in the 1960s, Herzog's speed teams in the 1980s and La Russa's long run from 1996 to 2011.
The franchise also has a sharp split personality. For about 30 years after its entry into the National League it was one of the worst clubs in baseball, and in 1897 and 1898 it lost 102 and 111 games. Then it reinvented itself, mostly through one idea: grow your own players in a farm system and stop paying for other people's. That idea carried the club through most of the century.
This history runs era by era and takes every record, leader and series result from the historical record. Individual players get fuller treatment in the best players in Cardinals history, the home ballpark in the Busch Stadium guide, and each October in the best Cardinals seasons and every postseason run.
The Browns of the American Association, 1882 to 1891
The franchise's first name was the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1882, shortened to Browns for 1883 through 1898. For its first decade it was a member of the American Association, a rival major league that charged less for tickets and allowed beer at the park. Owner Chris von der Ahe ran the club as a show, and his player-manager, Charlie Comiskey, ran it as a team. Comiskey won 563 games and lost 273 as the Browns' manager from 1883 to 1891, a percentage of .673 that no later Cardinals manager with a long tenure has matched.
The Browns won four straight pennants, in 1885, 1886, 1887 and 1888, with records of 79-33 in 1885 and 95-40 in 1887. In the postseason they met the National League champion. The 1885 meeting with Chicago ended with each club winning three games. In 1886 the Browns beat Chicago four games to two, the franchise's first championship. They lost to Detroit in 1887 and to the New York club in 1888. The historical record lists the stars: Arlie Latham, who stole 369 bases for the club, Comiskey, who stole 333, and Tommy McCarthy, who stole 270 in four seasons.
The golden age ended with the American Association itself. The league folded after the 1891 season, and the franchise joined the National League in 1892.
The wilderness, 1892 to 1919
The first decade in the National League was a disaster. The club played at Sportsman's Park I through 1892 and then at Robison Field from 1893 until mid-1920, a ballpark named for the brothers who owned the club. The records tell the story: 40-90 in 1896, 29-102 in 1897 and 39-111 in 1898. The 29-102 team of 1897 is the franchise's worst by winning percentage, and the 111 losses of 1898 are its most.
The names changed along the way. The club was the Perfectos for the 1899 season and became the Cardinals in 1900, a name that has lasted ever since. The new century did not bring better results. Between 1900 and 1919 the club finished above .500 only four times (1901, 1911, 1914 and 1917), with 81-72 and third in 1914 and 82-70 and third in 1917 the best of them. In 1908 the historical record shows a 49-105 record and in 1913 a 51-99 record. Miller Huggins managed 774 games from 1913 to 1917 and finished 346-415 before leaving for New York, where he would build the Yankees.
The most important event of this era came at the end of it. Branch Rickey had joined the club in 1917 as president and business manager, and in 1919 he took over the dugout as well, running both the field team and the baseball operation. Rickey could not afford to buy established talent, so he did something that sounds routine today and was then radical: he signed large numbers of young players, placed them in minor-league affiliates the club owned or controlled and kept the best. He managed the Cardinals from 1919 to 1925 with a 458-485 record, which does not hint at what he built.
Hornsby, Rickey and the first pennants, 1920 to 1934
In July 1920 the Cardinals moved into Sportsman's Park, sharing the ballpark with the St. Louis Browns of the American League. Rogers Hornsby, the second baseman, was the first superstar of the new era. He hit .401 with 42 home runs and 152 RBI in 1922 and .424 in 1924, when he collected 227 hits. His batting average for the club was .359, the best in franchise history among players with 3,000 at-bats, and he won the Triple Crown in 1922 and again in 1925. In 1925 he won the MVP award and took over as player-manager.
The pennant came in 1926. The Cardinals went 89-65 and beat the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series, four games to three, the first championship since 1886. It was an odd, seesaw affair, and the most famous moment came late in Game 7, when veteran pitcher Pete Alexander was called out of the bullpen to protect the lead. Bob O'Farrell, the catcher, was the league's MVP. Weeks later Hornsby was traded to the Giants for Frankie Frisch, a move that stunned fans and, in time, worked in the club's favor.
The club won pennants again in 1928, 1930, 1931 and 1934. Jim Bottomley was MVP in 1928. The 1931 team went 101-53 and beat the Philadelphia Athletics four games to three, and Frisch won the MVP award. The 1934 team, known as the Gashouse Gang, was built around Frisch as player-manager, Joe Medwick and Dizzy Dean. Dean won 30 games and lost seven that year, with a 2.66 ERA and 195 strikeouts in 311 2/3 innings, and took the MVP award. The Cardinals beat Detroit in seven games.
Southworth, Musial and the 1940s dynasty, 1935 to 1953
If the 1920s and early 1930s were the first golden age, the early 1940s were the club's best baseball. It won 106 games in 1942, 105 in 1943 and 105 in 1944, and took three straight pennants and two championships in that stretch. Billy Southworth's Cardinals went 620-346 in the 981 games he managed, and the farm system Rickey had built kept supplying players even after Rickey himself left for Brooklyn following the 1942 season.
The star was Stan Musial. He debuted in 1941 and won the MVP award in 1943, 1946 and 1948. His 1948 season is one of the best of the century: 230 hits, 39 home runs, 131 RBI and a .376 average. Mort Cooper won the MVP award in 1942 and Marty Marion won it in 1944. Enos Slaughter, Red Schoendienst and the pitchers Harry Brecheen and Max Lanier supplied depth.
The 1942 club beat the Yankees four games to one. The 1943 club lost to the same Yankees in five. In 1944 the Cardinals met the St. Louis Browns, the franchise that later became the Baltimore Orioles, in a World Series played entirely in one ballpark, and won four games to two. In 1946 the club tied Brooklyn for the pennant, won a best-of-three playoff, and beat Boston in seven games on a dash home by Slaughter in the deciding game.
The 1950s were a letdown. The club finished no better than second in any season from 1950 to 1963. In 1953 the Anheuser-Busch brewery bought the club, and in 1954 the Browns left for Baltimore. Musial kept going, retiring after 1963 with 3,630 hits, 475 home runs, 1,951 RBI and a .331 average. He remains the franchise leader in hits, runs, RBI and walks, and he never won a championship after 1946.
Gibson, Brock and Boyer: the 1960s
The next pennant arrived in 1964. Johnny Keane's team went 93-69 to edge the field, and it beat the Yankees four games to three. Bob Gibson won two games in the Series. Third baseman Ken Boyer was the league's MVP. The most consequential move of that season was the June trade for Lou Brock, a young outfielder from the Cubs who would steal 888 bases for the Cardinals, still the club record. Brock hit .306 in 1974 and stole a then-record 118 bases that year.
The 1967 team went 101-60 and beat the Red Sox in the seven-game World Series that Boston fans remember as the Impossible Dream. Gibson won three games. Orlando Cepeda won the MVP award. In 1968 the club returned to the Series, led by Gibson's 22-9 record, 1.12 ERA and 268 strikeouts across 304.2 innings, a season that won him both the MVP and the Cy Young Award and helped prompt baseball to lower the mound the next year. The Cardinals lost to Detroit in seven games after leading three games to one.
Gibson's career line shows the scale of his dominance: 251 wins, 3,117 strikeouts and 56 shutouts, all franchise records, over 528 games from 1959 to 1975. He won the Cy Young Award again in 1970 and nine Gold Gloves. The 1960s also saw the club move into a new downtown ballpark, Busch Memorial Stadium, which replaced Sportsman's Park and was the home of the Cardinals through 2005. Its best season attendance was 3,538,988.
The 1970s: Torre, Simmons and a long gap
The 1970s were a quiet decade by the club's standards. The Cardinals won 90 games in 1971, when Joe Torre took the MVP award, and finished second in 1971, 1973 and 1974, but they never won a division title. Ted Simmons, who played for the club from 1968 to 1980, collected 929 RBI. Keith Hernandez shared the MVP award in 1979.
The lack of a flag was a product of the sport's structure as much as the roster. The National League East was won by Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for most of the decade, and the Cardinals lost narrowly. By 1980 the club had gone 12 years without a pennant, and it hired the manager who would end that drought.
Whitey Herzog and the 1980s
Whitey Herzog managed the club from 1980 to 1990 with a record of 822-728, and he also served as general manager for part of that time. His design was to build a roster around speed and defense to suit the artificial turf of Busch Stadium: Ozzie Smith at shortstop, Willie McGee in center, and, from 1985, Vince Coleman in left. Coleman stole 549 bases for the club, second only to Brock. Smith won 13 straight Gold Gloves and collected 1,944 hits and 433 stolen bases in his Cardinals career.
The 1982 club won the National League East, swept Atlanta in the NLCS and beat the Milwaukee Brewers four games to three in a World Series nicknamed the Suitcase Series because the two cities are so close together. The 1985 club won 101 games, with McGee winning the MVP and Coleman winning Rookie of the Year, and lost the World Series to the Kansas City Royals in seven games after a disputed call at first base in Game 6. The 1987 club won 95 games and lost the World Series to Minnesota, also in seven games.
Herzog's Cardinals never had a lineup full of home-run hitters. That was the point. They won with defense and running, and they scored when they moved runners.
La Russa, McGwire and Pujols, 1990 to 2011
The early 1990s were uneven, with a 70-92 record in 1990 and a 73-89 record in 1997. In 1996 the club hired Tony La Russa, who would manage it for 16 seasons and 2,582 games and finish 1,405-1,177, the winningest tenure in club history. His teams won the division in 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009.
In 1997 the club acquired Mark McGwire. In 1998 he hit 70 home runs, the most in a season to that point and a number that held the record for three years. His 220 home runs in a Cardinals uniform came in just five seasons. Albert Pujols arrived in 2001, won the Rookie of the Year award with 37 home runs and 130 RBI, and began a run that would carry him to three MVP awards (2005, 2008 and 2009) and 469 home runs with the club.
The 2004 team won 105 games and the pennant, then was swept by Boston in the World Series. The 2005 team won 100 games but lost the NLCS to Houston in six games. The 2006 team, which opened Busch Stadium III that year, won only 83 games, one of the lowest totals ever for a World Series champion, and then beat the Mets in seven games and the Tigers in five. Chris Carpenter, who had won the Cy Young Award in 2005 with a 21-5 record, went 15-8 in 2006.
The 2011 team is the most improbable of the group. It won 90 games and the wild card on the final day of the season. In the World Series against Texas it was one strike from elimination twice in Game 6, and David Freese hit a game-tying triple in the ninth and a game-winning home run in the eleventh. St. Louis won Game 7 and the title. Lance Berkman, the former Astro, had tied that game with a two-out single in the tenth. La Russa retired soon afterward, and Pujols left for the Angels.
Molina, Wainwright and the end of an era, 2012 to 2025
The post-La Russa club was managed by Mike Matheny from 2012 to 2018 (591-474). It won 97 games and the pennant in 2013, losing the World Series to Boston, and 100 games in 2015, when it lost the division series to the Cubs. Yadier Molina, who played for the club from 2004 to 2022, collected 2,168 hits. Adam Wainwright, with the club from 2005 to 2023, won 200 games and struck out 2,202 batters, third and second in those categories in club history behind Gibson and, for wins, Jesse Haines.
The club's last division titles came in 2019 and 2022. In 2019 it beat Atlanta in five games and was swept by Washington in the NLCS. In 2022 Paul Goldschmidt won the MVP award, Pujols returned for a farewell season and hit 24 home runs, and Molina retired after the year. St. Louis then lost the wild-card series to Philadelphia in two games.
The club went 71-91 in 2023 and finished last in the NL Central, then 83-79 in 2024 and 78-84 in 2025, finishing second and then fourth. The pipeline that Rickey built is still the template, but the club that exits the Molina and Wainwright years is trying to decide what comes next.
The twelve championships
| Year | Opponent | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1886 | Chicago (NL) | Won 4-2 |
| 1926 | New York Yankees | Won 4-3 |
| 1931 | Philadelphia Athletics | Won 4-3 |
| 1934 | Detroit Tigers | Won 4-3 |
| 1942 | New York Yankees | Won 4-1 |
| 1944 | St. Louis Browns | Won 4-2 |
| 1946 | Boston Red Sox | Won 4-3 |
| 1964 | New York Yankees | Won 4-3 |
| 1967 | Boston Red Sox | Won 4-3 |
| 1982 | Milwaukee Brewers | Won 4-3 |
| 2006 | Detroit Tigers | Won 4-1 |
| 2011 | Texas Rangers | Won 4-3 |
The pattern is striking: eight of the twelve championships needed a seventh game. The franchise's quiet counterpart is its list of lost Series. Since joining the National League it has lost in 1928, 1930, 1943, 1968, 1985, 1987, 2004 and 2013, and three of those (1968, 1985 and 1987) went seven games.
Common questions
Why are they called the Cardinals? The club took the name in 1900 after being the Browns and, for a season, the Perfectos. The name stuck, and the franchise has been the Cardinals for every season since.
How many World Series have they won? Twelve, counting 1886. Eleven came after the club joined the National League.
Who is the best player in club history? Stan Musial leads the franchise in hits (3,630), runs (1,949), RBI (1,951), walks (1,599) and home runs (475, narrowly ahead of Pujols's 469). Gibson is the best pitcher by every measure in the historical record.
What was the best regular season? The 1942 club at 106-48. The 1943 and 1944 clubs went 105-49. The 1885 and 1887 Browns won at higher percentages in shorter schedules.
What was the worst? The 1898 club went 39-111, and the 1897 club went 29-102.
Where to go next
Follow the current club on the Cardinals team page, see the park on the Busch Stadium page and read the news in the Cardinals topic feed. For the club's division rivals, read the history of the Cubs, the Reds and the Brewers, and for the larger picture see the history of the World Series.