Some Cardinals-Cubs Series History

Happy Easter and it's Opening Day in Major League Baseball. It's a beautiful day in New Orleans right now. Let's have some fun.

Tonight, the St. Louis Cardinals visit the Chicago Cubs to kick off the 2015 MLB season. Chicago leads the series 1,190-1,116-19. In this decade however, the Cardinals lead the series 48-37 and they led the series last season 10-9. Yes, there were the St. Louis Brown Stockings. However, they folded after the 1875 season due to a game fixing scandal and the 1876-81 teams are not considered to be part of this St. Louis franchise.

Also, according to Wikipedia, there were 19 ties in the series, but those games aren't listed on mcubed.net (Cubs v Cards series). The ties are listed as losses for both teams, so I subtracted 19 losses from their records. The Baseball Reference head to head page isn't any better. The tie games aren't even counted in the head to head series. At least they're counted with overall records.

The series began in 1892, when the St. Louis Browns fell to the Chicago Colts 14-10. They went to extra innings 106 times. St. Louis leads the series in extra innings wins 58-48. In 1930, the Cubs and Cards went 20 innings before St. Louis won 8-7.

Believe it or not, in the 123 years of this rivalry, they never met in the playoffs. Prior to 1903, postseason games were considered exhibition games. With that said, before the series as we know it began, the St. Louis Browns did play the Chicago White Stockings (later the Cubs) in two "World Series." In 1885, they tied 3-3-1 and in 1886, the Browns won the series 4-2.

The most runs St. Louis ever scored against Chicago was a 21-3 win in 1977. There were also a couple of 20-5 victories in 1904 and 1925. The most runs Chicago ever scored against St. Louis was a 26-8 spanking in 1894.

Unlike football, shutouts are fairly common in baseball, so they won't be listed. Each team shut out the other at least once last season.

Here are a few other tidbits:

In 1898, the Chicago Colts changed their name to the Orphans. The name lasted until 1904, when they became the Cubs.

In 1899, the St. Louis Browns changed their name to the Perfectos. That only lasted one season. In 1900, they became the St. Louis Cardinals. The Perfectos went 84-67-4 that season.

On May 15, 1960, in the second game of a double-header, Don Cardwell of the Cubs threw the only no-hitter in the series against the Cardinals. Cardwell pitched a complete games and struck out 7 batters, including Hall of Famer Stan Musial. Chicago won the game 4-0. Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks went 1-4. His only hit was a two run homerun.

In 1910 King Cole also threw a no-hitter against the Cardinals. However, the game isn't counted, because it ended after 7 innings.

And the series is renewed tonight. Good luck to both teams.

Until next time...

Have a great day!!!!

MLB All-Time Records, et al

With Opening Day coming this weekend, baseball returns to the national spotlight. Hopefully my Atlanta Braves will fare better this season than last. Also, thank you Readers, for checking out my past Today In posts.

I'm on mcubed.net MLB page and am having a little fun here. My Braves come into the 2015 season at with an all-time record of 10,382-10482. There are only 7 teams with a win total greater than 10,000: Chicago Cubs (10,503-10,277), Cincinnati Reds (10,307-10,109), Los Angeles Dodgers (10,156-9,368), New York Yankees (10,255-7,895), San Francisco Giants (10,876-9,514), St. Louis Cardinals (10,597-9,969), and the Braves. The Yankees have the MLB best winning percentage (56.5) and the the Giants have the NL's best percentage (53.3).

There are only two teams with more than 100 playoff game (including World Series) wins. The obvious and correct first guess is the New York Yankees. They have the most wins and a playoff record of 224-154. The other team is the St. Louis Cardinals, with a playoff record of 129-114. Now the Los Angeles Dodgers broke 100 in a different way. Their playoff record is 82-105 and 37 of those losses came at the hands of the Yankees.

The 14-61 New York Knicks are still Kings of the Cellar. They are 2-10 since my last post and are sporting an 8 game losing streak. The 16-59 Minnesota Timberwolves are nipping at their heels. Today's honorable mention goes to the 37-38 Milwaukee Bucks. They're 3-7 in their last ten games, but at least they're 3-2 since March 24.

I'm waiting on one more set of edit notes before putting the final touches on The Curse. Once I get them, the process should be quick. I also finished the first edit of Justice and will start the draft my inner circle will see. So far, the final checks of Second Chance look good. Someone is designing a cover, but until it's ready, I'll use a more generic cover.

Camp NaNoWriMo has started. For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, which is in November. The Camp NaNoWriMo months occur in April and July. Although I participated in all three last year, I will not be participating in the camps this year. There's a ton of editing to be done from last year's camps, not including other works that need editing. However, this is subject to change.

Until next time...

Have a great day!!!