Those working for and around the St. Louis Cardinals today reach back to the 1940’s.
Nothing particularly profound coming in this post. I was just thinking about the recent departure of the longest-tenured St. Louis Cardinals player, Rick Ankiel. He just missed having been a three-decade Cardinal, and was the last link to the 1990’s as an active player. The newest member of the Kansas City Royals made his major league debut with St. Louis in 1999.
As one player from the 1990’s departed, another returned as a coach as Mark McGwire restored his tie to a pair of earlier decades of Cardinals history. To that end, I jotted down a list of people with and around the organization as part of their job today, in and out of uniform, and their first decade of major league Cardinals service.
Albert Pujols, who joined the team on opening day 2001, has become the dean of the current players in terms of service with St. Louis, but of course Red Schoendienst has been around the longest. Red, a special assistant to the general manager, made his St. Louis debut in 1945. As such, he has now been with the organization at the major league level in parts of eight different decades.
The first decade of appearance in the Cardinals major league uniform is noted below. There has been at least one arrival during each ten-year period since the 1940’s.
1940’s: Red Schoendienst
1950’s: Bob Gibson
1960’s: Mike Shannon, Lou Brock
1970’s: Al Hrabosky
1980’s: Jose Oquendo, Rick Horton, Mike Jorgensen, Jack Clark
1990’s: Andy Benes, Alan Benes, Mark McGwire, Tony La Russa, Dave McKay, Dave Duncan
2000’s: Too many to count
Did I miss anyone who once wore the major league uniform and is employed in some capacity around the team today? Sound off below.
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I didn’t realize Andy Benes had an official capacity with the team — what’s his job?
Do people realize that McKay and Jose Conseco co-authored a book on weight training for athletes? I wonder why no one asks LaRussa if his 1st base coach, former conditioning coach, and co-author on strength enhancement with an admitted steroid user knew anything or was also blind to the roids use on his teams? Not that I care personally but if I was a journalist I’d sure be asking.
For the last several years, Andy Benes has been the host of a Cardinals Crew kids show on TV, yucking it up with Fredbird. He’s also done some other work on FOX Sports Midwest from time to time.
CC, for a guy who seems to want to move on, I am surprised you are suggesting dredging up the Canseco-McKay connection again.
I have actually spoken to McKay about it before, back in the 2005 time frame when Jose’s book came out. He waved off any knowledge and said he didn’t know what guys did outside the clubhouse. On another thread here on the blog, I posted a snippet of McKay’s testimony from the Mitchell Report investigation where he and La Russa admitted they had suspicions. Here it is again:
Here is one of McKay’s quotes from the 1990 book, now 20 years old: