5 Things St. Louis Cardinals' Fans Might Not Know About Their Team

Perhaps in all of baseball there are no fans who know as much about their club as those of the St. Louis Cardinals. The rooters of the Cardinals take pride in not only knowing all there is to know about the current team, but also have a great in-depth understanding of past Cardinals' squads. However, the following 5 facts may be something that even these great baseball fans are learning for the first time. Here are 5 things about the St' Louis Cardinals that their supporters might find interesting.

1. Joe Medwick holds the all-time single season RBI mark for the Cardinals!

Stan Musial dominates Cardinal career hitting records, including total runs batted in, but he does not have even one season in the top ten for the most RBI in a single campaign for St. Louis. His best year for runs batted in was 1948 when he had 131, which falls 6 short of lifting him into the ten best St. Louis seasons for that category. Medwick had 154 in 1937, a couple more than Rogers Hornsby's 152 in 1922. Mark McGwire, Albert Pujols, Jim Bottomley, and Joe Torre are all in the top ten all-time Cardinals' RBI seasons, but it is "Ducky" Medwick that holds the record, which came while he was earning the Triple Crown, also leading the NL that year in average at .374 and home runs with 31.

2. Lou Brock struck out more than any other Cardinal!

It is a tribute to the batting eye of Musial that he ranks only seventh on this list despite having 2, 3, and in some cases almost 4 times as many at-bats as some of the others on it. Musial whiffed 696 in 12,712 plate appearances, while Brock fanned 1,469 times in just under 10,000. Vince Coleman, for example, struck out 628 times in just 3,906 Cardinals' plate appearances, while Jim Edmonds, their centerfielder the last few years, is third on the list with 1,209 in 4,356! Ray Lankford, a St. Louis outfielder who retired in 2004, came up 20 short of Brock's mark, leaving the club with 1,449 strikeouts.

3. Ted Simmons received the most intentional walks in Cardinals' history!

Pujols will own this record within a few years, as his 120 stands him in third already after just 7 seasons. Musial had 127 free passes, but Simmons, a fine hitting catcher who hit over .300 for the Cardinals 6 times, leads with his 151, which came in almost half the plate appearances that Musial had. Simmons twice led the senior circuit in intentional bases on balls, in 1976 and again in 1977.

4. Rogers Hornsby was so tough to live with that St. Louis sent him packing after he managed them to a title!

As good a player as Rogers was, he was that bad of a person. However, as a player-manager he led the Redbirds to their first championship, in 1926. After that season though, he was dealt to the Giants, because nobody in the Cardinals' front office could stand him, despite his having won 6 straight batting crowns and hitting over .400 3 times. Hornsby's temperament did little to endear him to the other teams he played for after his St. Louis days were over; the Cubs released the player-manager in August of 1932, even while he had the team in first place.

5. St. Louis was on the wrong end of one of baseball's worst trades ever!

Branch Rickey is remembered for many great things, but few recall that he sent slugger Johnny Mize to the Giants in December of 1941 for basically 3 nobodies and $50,000. Thinking that Mize was on the decline at the age of 28, Rickey traded him, even though he had knocked in over 100 runs for 5 consecutive seasons. Mize went on to have 2 of his best years in New York, hitting 51 home runs in 1947 and 40 in 1948, the most in the league. Mize then went to the Yankees, where as a valuable part-time player he helped them to 5 world titles in a row. He hit 3 home runs in the 1952 World Series and belted a total of 201 round trippers after leaving the Cardinals, on his way to the Hall of Fame.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/STL/