St. Louis Cardinals in Baltimore tickets

Few franchises in American sports carry the pedigree of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Redbirds have won 11 World Series championships, the most of any National League team and second in Major League Baseball only to the New York Yankees, and they have collected them across every era of the modern game. Since 2006 the club has played at Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis, a baseball-only yard where the view past the outfield wall opens onto the Gateway Arch and the city skyline. Statues of franchise icons stand watch outside the gates, and Ballpark Village sits just across Clark Street, so the gameday footprint stretches well beyond the ballpark itself. Cardinals tickets here come with a crowd that grew up on this team and a ballpark that wears its history well.

The franchise dates to 1882, when Chris von der Ahe reorganized a barnstorming club into the St. Louis Browns and made it a charter member of the American Association. Those Browns rolled to four consecutive pennants from 1885 through 1888 under player-manager Charles Comiskey, joined the National League in 1892, and became the Cardinals in 1900 after fans embraced the cardinal red trim on the club's uniforms. The winning tradition took root in the 1920s, when Branch Rickey pioneered the minor league farm system and turned St. Louis into a talent machine. That pipeline delivered the franchise's first championship in 1926, Dizzy Dean and the rowdy Gashouse Gang in 1934, and a 1940s run with a .623 winning percentage that topped every other major league club that decade. Bob Gibson powered titles in 1964 and 1967 and posted a 1.12 ERA in 1968 that still stands as the modern-era record, Whitey Herzog's Whiteyball club took the 1982 crown, and the 2000s and early 2010s added two more banners behind Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina.

The all-time roster doubles as a Hall of Fame roll call, with Lou Brock, Dizzy Dean, Bob Gibson, Rogers Hornsby, Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, Enos Slaughter, and Ozzie Smith enshrined in Cooperstown alongside manager Tony La Russa. A handful of careers set the standard:

• Stan Musial: three MVPs, seven batting titles, and 17 major league and 29 National League records, the most accomplished career in franchise history.
• Bob Gibson: two Cy Young Awards, the 1968 MVP, and a World Series single-game record of 17 strikeouts to go with that 1.12 ERA season.
• Ozzie Smith: 13 Gold Glove Awards at shortstop, the most all-time at the position, plus 15 All-Star selections.
• Rogers Hornsby: batting Triple Crowns in 1922 and 1925, two of the four in franchise history.
• Albert Pujols: three MVPs, 469 home runs as a Cardinal, and the 700th home run of his career.

The Cardinals' championship years map a century of staying power:

• 1926
• 1931
• 1934
• 1942
• 1944
• 1946
• 1964
• 1967
• 1982
• 2006
• 2011

The runs behind those banners are the franchise's lore. The 1940s clubs paired three championships with three 105-win seasons. The 1982 Whiteyball team topped the Milwaukee Brewers, and the 2006 club closed the first season at the current Busch Stadium by beating Detroit in five games, the first team to win a World Series in its ballpark's inaugural year since the 1923 Yankees. The 2011 Cardinals overcame a 10.5-game deficit after 130 games just to reach the playoffs, then won World Series Game 6 by tying the score twice with the club down to its final strike before David Freese ended it with a walk-off home run. Those 11 titles came alongside 19 National League pennants, the third-most in league history.

The individual hardware matches the team success. Cardinals players have earned 21 league MVP awards, four batting Triple Crowns, and three Cy Young Awards, and the franchise has posted nine 100-win seasons, including four of 105 or more. Tony La Russa stepped away after the 2011 title, the only manager to retire right after winning a championship, finishing with 1,408 wins, the most of any manager in franchise history, and capping a 2000 through 2013 run that brought ten playoff appearances, four pennants, and two titles.

The fanbase goes by Cardinals Nation, a name coined during the Gashouse Gang era, when radio broadcasts carried the Redbirds to listeners far beyond St. Louis, and the following never faded. St. Louis is a mid-level market, yet the Cardinals drew more than 3 million fans in every season from 2004 through 2019 and regularly rank among the top three MLB teams in local television ratings. Fredbird works the crowd from field level to the top of the dugouts, and the Rally Squirrel, which scampered across home plate during the 2011 playoff run, is engraved on the team's World Series rings. Across Clark Street, the Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum and the rooftop decks of Ballpark Village turn the neighborhood into a gathering spot before and after first pitch.

Nothing rallies that community like the Chicago Cubs. The rivalry, known as the I-55 Series and in earlier decades the Route 66 Series, traces to the 1880s, when the club, then playing as the Browns, met the Chicago White Stockings, the predecessors of the Cubs, in a forerunner of the modern World Series, and it stays heated with both teams in the National League Central. Cardinals vs. Cubs games draw big traveling contingents to both Busch Stadium and Wrigley Field, and the ledger tilts toward St. Louis where it counts, with 11 World Series titles to the Cubs' 3 and 19 pennants to their 17. The cross-state Kansas City Royals supply the other marquee matchup in the Show-Me Series, also called the I-70 Series, which began with the 1985 World Series, the clubs' only postseason meeting. Those rivalry dates are the circled games on any Cardinals calendar, and tickets for them tend to move first.