The Royals have overtaken the Cardinals as Missouri’s better baseball team

Vibes around Kansas City are much more positive than around St. Louis

For years, despite living in the suburbs of Kansas City, I rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals over the Kansas City Royals. The reason is simple: my family all rooted for the Cardinals. Of the seven people in my immediate family, I arrived last, but more importantly, I was the only one not born in St. Louis.

I rooted for the teams for which my family rooted.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t root for any Kansas City teams. I rooted for the Chiefs. The St. Louis football Cardinals bolted town for the desert before I turned a year old. Even before then, though, my father rooted for the Chiefs.

In hockey, we rooted for the Blues, though we attended Blades games well enough. Different leagues, of course. Different levels. No conflict there.

Basketball—the Missouri Tigers. I had cousins in Kansas City who rooted for the Chicago Bulls, and, looking back on it, I wish I also had. There’s nothing wrong in rooting for greatness. But I hardly remember the NBA being available to watch back then, definitely not like it is now.

Baseball, though, baseball was all about the St. Louis Cardinals. Forget the Royals—the Cardinals, at the time, had won nine World Series titles, the second-most in history and eight more than the lowly Royals.

Throughout the years, into high school and college and law school, I kept rooting for the Cardinals, and why not? They were good. They damn near won the pennant in 1996; acquired baseball’s biggest star in 1997; returned to the playoffs in 2000; promoted Albert Pujols the next year; and made the playoffs in 12 of the next 16 seasons, a period of time that included four trips to the World Series and two more titles.

The Royals? The Royals were not good. The Royals got rid of their stars. I remember being devastated when they dealt Kevin Appier. I remember be so jazzed when they made moves for Chili Davis, Jay Bell, and Jeff King—before being bummed as that team lost 94 games.

That same squad acquired Dean Palmer from the Rangers—hell yeah, brother! A bopping third baseman! My favorite type of player! He made the All-Star Game in 1998 as he slugged 34 home runs and drove in 119 runs. The Royals went 72-89, and Palmer left for Detroit.

Toward the end of my Mizzou days, when I decided to go to law school, I met for a pre-law advisor for the first and only time. One thing she said stuck with me: “Go to school where you want to work.” As in, “If you want to work in St. Louis, go to law school there. If you want to live in Columbia, go to law school here.”

A fork in the road if there ever were one.

I chose UMKC and Kansas City.

It took a while, until after I graduated from law school, but eventually, the Royals supplanted the Cardinals as my favorite team in my favorite sport.

***

Earlier, I mentioned that, when I was born, the Cardinals had nine World Series titles compared to the Royals’ one. Since that time, the Cardinals won two more, in 2006 and 2011, while the Royals picked up another in 2015. Today, the Cardinals have 11, the Royals have two.

As my father-in-law says about this: The Cardinals should have that many, they’ve been around for 100 years!

Let’s, then, take a look at World Series titles since 1969, the year the Royals began play. It’s a lot closer: Cardinals have three (1982, 2006, 2011) and the Royals have two (1985, 2015).

***

In 2024, the Cardinals, while avoiding a second consecutive losing season, missed the playoffs for the second straight season. They haven’t won a playoff game since 2020. They haven’t won a playoff series since 2019.

In contrast, the Royals emerged from several losing seasons to reach the playoffs in 2024, and then beat the favored Baltimore Orioles in the Wild Card round for the team’s first playoff series win since defeating the Mets in the 2015 World Series.

And the vibes shifted, not only among fans, but among the actual teams.

Last offseason, the Royals shelled out money to bring in starting pitchers Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha (former Cardinal) as well as other players who all helped mold the team into one that would improve by 30 wins. This offseason, the Royals convinced Wacha to stick around while bringing back swing-pitcher Michael Lorenzen and traded stalwart starting pitcher Brady Singer to the Reds for two players, headlined by former National League Rookie of the Year, Jonathan India.

In other words, last offseason, the Royals made moves, and this offseason, they continue making moves.

The Cardinals? Not so much. And after missing the playoffs in 2024, the Cardinals signaled to fans and teams around the league that they were taking a step back to re-develop their once-vaunted farm system.

The Cardinals—who once traded for Mark McGwire, who nearly signed David Price in free agency years ago, who acquired Nolan Arenado from the Rockies, who acquired Matt Holliday from the Athletics, who signed Wilson Contreras in free agency not that long ago—were essentially bowing out of the offseason before it even began.

Sure enough, they haven’t done much, except try to trade Arenado, who’s blocked at least one trade.

Royals vibes: up.

Cardinals vibes: down.

***

After losing the NFL’s Cardinals to Phoenix in 1988, St. Louis grabbed the Rams before the 1995 season. In 1999, Kurt Warner led an exciting, seemingly out-of-nowhere team to the Super Bowl. The following year, the Rams returned, only to lose a last-second heartbreaker to the Patriots.

And St. Louis didn’t seem to care all that much.

Sure, the Rams had their fans, but the Rams were never going to compare to the baseball Cardinals.

Before the Rams returned to Los Angeles, I looked at every United States city that had an NFL team plus one other professional sports team in the NBA, MLB, and/or NHL. I wanted to see if that was any city in which the NFL wasn’t top dawg.

There was only one: St. Louis. In fact, I would’ve argued the Rams were third behind the Cardinals and Blues.

That puts the focus more on the Cardinals. The Royals didn’t have that problem, and they still don’t. Even in 2014 and 2015, when the Royals went to the World Series in consecutive seasons, the Chiefs were more popular. And now, when the Royals are back in serious playoff conversations, the Chiefs are still the king. That takes at least some of the heat off the Royals.

***

I know a lot of Cardinals fans, and I reached out to some family and friends regarding their feelings about the current state of the franchise. Their thoughts and feelings are in stark contract to the previous vibe around the team, almost completely inversed. It reminded me of Royals fans when the Royals were directionless.

Cardinals Fan 1: “The Cardinals seem to be floundering as they search for their next big name player that can lead their team. They seem stale and need some new blood in the front office.”

Cardinals Fan 2: “We will not be competitive for a few years and there is not interesting star power on the team to keep the down years exciting, so not looking forward to the current direction at all.”

Cardinals Fan 3: “The Cardinals are a boat without a paddle, just floating along steadily as she goes with no momentum forward. The only thing keeping them from sinking is their legacy.”

Cardinals Fan 4: “We keep banking on our outfield farm prospects to be the next Willie Mays, or maybe Jim Edmonds. They are not (Jordan Walker being the latest example).”

Cardinals Fan 5: “Oh lord...umm ok my current feelings are...Bored but hopeful for the young talent we have.”

***

As you can, from the mouths of fans, hope for the team is low. John Mozeliak is on his way out. Jordan Walker hasn’t lived up to the hype. There’s not a player on the team or in the system who inspires. I love the line, “The only thing keeping them from sinking is their legacy.”

It’s definitely a strong legacy, one greater than which the Royals share, but if current times say anything, it’s that the present defeats the past.

The Cardinals are going down.

The Royals are going up.