St. Louis Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. Making Busch Stadium their home field since 2006, the Cardinals compete in the National League (NL) Central Division of Major League Baseball (MLB). Known prior as the Browns, St. Louis established themselves in 1882 in the American Association (AA), joined the NL in 1892 and adopted Cardinals as their official name in 1900.

As one of the most decorated and successful franchises in MLB history, St. Louis has won eleven World Series championships, 18 National League pennants, and ten division titles. Their eleven World Series titles are second overall only to the New York Yankees with 27. In the AA, St. Louis dominated with four championships and took one World Series against the Chicago Cubs of the NL prior to its recognition as an official contest. Other notable achievements include Branch Rickey pioneering the farm system, Stan Musial establishing or sharing seventeen Major League and 29 NL records, Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA season, Whitey Herzog's Whiteyball, Mark McGwire's home run chase, and 2011 team's comeback surprises. Four times in their history they have won 105 or more games and won 100 or more a total of eight times. Cardinals players have won the MVP award a total of twenty times; Cardinals pitchers have won the Cy Young Award three times. Baseball Hall of Fame inductees include Rickey, Musial, Gibson, Lou Brock, Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Ozzie Smith, Herzog, Bruce Sutter, Red Schoendienst, and Joe Medwick. Their historic rivalry with the Chicago Cubs is one of the most storied in professional sports.

An investment group headed by William DeWitt, Jr. owns the Cardinals, who is the currently the chairman and managing partner. John Mozeliak is the general manager and Mike Matheny is the manager. Renown for strong support from fans despite being in one of the smaller markets the sport, the Cardinals routinely draw among the highest attendance figures in the league, and are consistently among the top three in MLB in local television ratings. As of 2013, Forbes valued the Cardinals at $716 million, making them the tenth-most valuable franchise in MLB, "in the best single-team baseball market" in the United States.