What happened to the St. Louis Cardinals we all used to know!?

What happened to the St. Louis Cardinals we all used to know!?

The Cardinals introduced Caim Bloom. Do you remember that name? Now, they had to get that introduction. They couldn’t do it today. Quite obviously, they had to get it done. And they got it done prior to the sunset cuz this is the most important holiday of the Jewish calendar. And it’s not that I’m hungry right now cuz it’s only early in the morning. But I’ll get hangry soon. Angry. Hungry. Ken Bloom was introduced. You know the name Chief Baseball Officer. that funny title that was made up by the Boston Red Sox when he took over the Red Sox. You know Bloom, you know Tampa Connection Boston, hello. And then you know he got fired by Boston. Yes, you do. Then you know he came into St. Louis and he was under John Moiliac who was pushed aside. No, no, I plan to retire. I’ve been there too long. But it was the succession plan that would make Adam McCay happy. It was clean. Super clean. Ziliac out and bloom in. So they met the media. You knew that the chairman Bill Dawitz, his son, the president, Bill Ditz, you’ve got Junior, you’ve got the third. Believe me, you can keep him straight, though. Billy, you know this. You’re beginning to look more and more like your dad. Who of us isn’t? It’s going to happen. Oh my lord. It’s going to happen. Just look at the hands. Look at the hands. Look at the hands. The Cardinals had a problem during the introduction because they had to face the elephant in the room. It was far bigger than just a bird. They had to figure out how to answer questions about the quality of their team. How to answer questions about the lack of attendance, about the lack of revenue, about the lack of payroll growth, about the lack of winning. Things that Cardinals fans are not used to hearing. Things that Cardinals brass is not used to saying. So, Bill Dit sits there and wants to make sure that their message gets across to you. What do you think their message would be? First message, we are not in any way disagreeing with your evaluation of our team. We’ve got to be better. We’re not making any excuses. We’ve got to stop mediocrity. That’s the main message. Then you have to say that we hear you fans. We understand you’re frustrated. We get it. That’s a good message, too. The Ditz gave. But then Bill Dwit III had to give a quote. It was in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and he says, “Fans have made their point. We know that a winning team on the field is the most important thing relative to attendance. Uhoh. Bill, it’s it’s the commissioner. It’s Rob. How you doing, bud? Hey, listen. That whole winning attendance thing, we don’t talk about that. We don’t mention that. You can talk to that with your salespeople, but don’t let them fall into that trap. They got to sell when sell when they win, sell when you lose. We need revenue. you got to have revenue. Don’t ever publicly say that there’s a correlation between winning and attendance because then we’re going to have to go through the possibility of the correlation between a winning team and payroll and we know we don’t want to do that. Then we’re going to have to go into detail about your lack of TV TV revenue and all the things that have gone wrong with your organization. And that’s the reason why you have to keep putting payroll down because it’s a lagging indicator. When the revenue dries up, you carry that losses for that year, but then you adjust the payroll when your pro- fora projections for revenue the next year don’t include a rebound. And while you can acknowledge that your team hasn’t made the postseason 60% of the time over the last decade, you can acknowledge that. You can acknowledge the reality that, hey, we had an unbelievable streak of World Series titles. We made it past losing Albert Puhol to the Anaheim Angels of Anaheim. And we’ve always been there. We’ve made it past Meuire and steroids. We’ve always been there. What happened now? Well, what happened now is it’s a different generation of people. What happened now is people in St. Louis, there’s a lot more to do in St. Louis than there used to be. What happened now is 8,000 people from 2024 to 2025 decided every single night that I will make a different choice. That’s 8,000 people making a choice they hadn’t made in a decade, more than a decade, two decades, multiple decades. When your attendance drops by 8,000 people, just know that you can’t give the standard ordinary dril. You can’t just give lip service to that. You have to say what Bill Dwit said and it’s painful and it gets you in trouble because now what are your salespeople going to do when your salespeople are calling up potential customers, potential season ticket holders, potential group ticket holders, potential individual ticket holders, and they say to you, “I don’t want to buy yet because I want to see whether your team wins.” That’s page one of our sales sheet. When someone says we don’t want to come to a game until we know they’re going to win, we then say, “Hold on, give me the top five reasons that you go to games.” Camaraderie, time with family, time with co-workers, part being part of a community, feeling pride. Wait, where’s winning the game in that? Tell me every game you went to last year. 10 games. What was the Cardinals record? Oh, I can’t remember whether we won or lost. We may have lost a bunch, won a bunch. Exactly. It doesn’t matter whether the team wins or loses. Go to a game with your child. After the game, say, “Hey, do you know the score? Do you know who won?” No. They know they had time with their daddy. And believe me, time with your daddy. It can go away like that. If you have an opportunity to do it, you do it. Win, lose, who cares? So, you don’t want to have it out there. Hey, our attendance is going to keep being in the crapper until we find a way to win. What does that mean? Do you have to win a World Series? Do you have to win 90 games? Do you just want an above 500 record at home and then reckless disregard for your road record because no, we’re winning at home. That’s fun. Or is it overall team record where you could have a great road record, never win at home, still you’re going to bring those 8,000 people back? I don’t have a good answer for you, which is why we don’t say it. But they did. And now they’re absolutely going to have to pay the price for that.

#baseball #stlouis #MLB

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