Fifty years ago, the St. Louis Cardinals fielded a team with five future Hall of Famers, a near Hall-of-Famer in Dick Allen, and a future fWAR that ranked 20th in baseball history. Yet they underachieved their way to a 76-86 record, the team’s worst in 12 years.
How did that happen? And how did that season presage a doomed decade?
Cardinals fans with a sense of history cherish the 1960s, when the team won three pennants and two World Championships, and the 1980s when they won three pennants and one World Championship.