The topic of in the present day’s e-newsletter is the 1967 St. Louis Cardinals, who’re No. 40 within the Finest 50, my checklist of the best ballclubs in historical past. The rankings come from my new ebook, Baseball’s Finest (and Worst) Groups.
Right here’s a fast boilerplate rationalization that I’m appending to each story on this sequence:
I compiled the Finest 50 by analyzing 2,544 major-league groups from 1903 to 2024. These golf equipment have been ranked by their group scores (TS), that are plotted on a 100-point scale. (A given membership’s all-time percentile is the share of the opposite 2,543 groups that it outperformed.)
See my ebook for an evidence of my TS calculations. The ebook additionally affords separate breakdowns of the most effective and worst golf equipment for each decade and franchise, complete profiles of the Finest 50 (together with position-by-position lineups and far more info than you’ll discover on this e-newsletter), and comparable summaries of the ten worst groups of all time.
Now on to in the present day’s profile.
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Crew: 1967 St. Louis Cardinals
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Crew rating: 85.667 factors
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All-time rank: 40 of two,544
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All-time percentile: 98.47%
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Season document: 101-60 (.627)
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Season place: First place in Nationwide League
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Ultimate standing: World champion
The Cardinals used the Orioles’ success story as a template for their very own championship story. Baltimore acquired an acclaimed slugger, Frank Robinson, in late 1965. Robinson received the following season’s Most Invaluable Participant Award, main the Orioles to a world title. St. Louis swung its personal commerce for a famend energy hitter in Could 1966. Orlando Cepeda earned 1967’s MVP trophy, spurring the Cardinals to their very own crown.
The Playing cards had completed seventh within the Nationwide League in 1965 and sixth in 1966. The arrival of Cepeda and former Yankees star Roger Maris sparked an upswing. Maris was not a home-run menace — he cleared the fences solely 9 instances all season — however he clearly loved 1967 greater than any of his seven tumultuous years in New York. “I nearly forgot how a lot enjoyable it was to be in baseball,” he stated.
St. Louis trailed league-leading Cincinnati by 4.5 video games as late as June 7. However the Cardinals blazed to a 74-40 document the remainder of the best way, successful the pennant by 10.5 video games.
Get the entire lowdown on the 50 biggest (and 10 weakest) golf equipment of all time
No person — actually no person — anticipated Boston to achieve the World Sequence. The Sporting Information surveyed 255 sportswriters initially of the 1967 season, and nobody picked the Pink Sox to complete increased than fourth place within the American League.
But the Sox prevailed in a four-team dogfight to win their first AL pennant in 21 years, a triumph hailed because the “Unattainable Dream.” It was extensively assumed that the Cardinals would simply subdue the upstarts from Boston, and St. Louis did win three of the primary 4 video games.
However the Sox battled again to increase the World Sequence to its restrict. Bob Gibson pitched a three-hitter to win Sport Seven (and the championship) for the Cardinals. It was Gibson’s third complete-game victory of the sequence. He surrendered a complete of three runs in 27 innings.
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Racial tensions remained stubbornly commonplace in 1967, twenty years after Jackie Robinson built-in the key leagues. A number of groups — notably the San Francisco Giants — had been fractured into white, black, and Hispanic cliques. The Cardinals had been a uncommon exception. Middle fielder Curt Flood, himself a black man, stated the membership was “as near being freed from racist poison as a various group of twentieth century Individuals may probably be.”
First baseman Orlando Cepeda, whom the splintered Giants had dealt to the Cardinals, was instrumental in creating a cohesive unit in St. Louis. Cepeda was nicknamed Cha Cha as a result of he blasted jazz and Latin music within the clubhouse after video games. Teammates loved his vigorous and inclusive spirit. “We’re El Birdos as a result of Cha Cha named us that, and that’s what we need to be known as,” stated proper fielder Roger Maris. Flood known as Cepeda “our cheerleader, our glue.”
It actually helped that he was a dominant participant. Cepeda topped the Nationwide League with 111 RBIs, and he ranked sixth with a .325 batting common. Flood, a Gold Glove middle fielder, led the membership with a .335 BA. Fleet-footed left fielder Lou Brock stole 52 bases; no person else within the league pilfered greater than 29.
The brightest star on the St. Louis roster — outshining even Cepeda — was Bob Gibson. The fireballing pitcher had notched 60 victories over the earlier three seasons, however a Roberto Clemente line drive broke his leg in July 1967. Gibson was tough-minded — catcher Tim McCarver known as him “a person of mulish aggressive intuition” — and he tried to maintain pitching. He ultimately missed two months, ending with a disappointing (for him) document of 13-7.
