In the coming week or two, the St. Louis Cardinals of the National League will join a select group of the game’s oldest and dearest clubs by winning their 10,000th game in team history.
The early days of professional baseball were a mishmash of pop-up franchises, rival leagues and teams named for the color of their socks. From a primordial soup of Bridegrooms, Beaneaters, Colonels, Orphans, Alleghenys, Red Stockings (and White), Metropolitans, and, of course, Browns, emerged as the modern-day National League, though not even the teams can agree on how to pinpoint their precise birthdates. History, as one official said this past week, is “slippery.