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By Tony Samboras
Every once in a while, something happens in sports that simply defies logic. As sports fans, we have all been indoctrinated to believe that the best teams have the best players and are able to pack the stats on the way to a league championship. It’s hard to imagine the New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles, Edmonton Oilers or New York Yankees would have ever taken down league championships without having rosters that included top players like Tom Brady, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Wayne Greztky and Mickey Mantle.
Well beyond anything a reasonable sports fan could ever fathom, the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals went far above the expectations of everyone but the most loyal fans. In 1982, the Cardinals won the World Series. That unto itself is not that surprising given the city’s rich baseball tradition. In fact, it was the 8th of what is now 10 World Championships in St. Louis. Here’s the thing. If a sports bettor armed with Pointsbet promo code were given the 1982 MLB season end stats for all teams and asked to wager on which team won the Series, rare would be the bettor who would wager on the Cardinals.
The 1982 St. Louis Cardinals finished the season with a very nice record of 92-70. They won the NL East division by three games over the Philadelphia Phillies. They moved on to defeat the Atlanta Braves in three straight games to claim the NL Pennant and the right to play the American League champ Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series. The Cardinals took the title in a very competitive seven-game series. Nothing strange about any of this.
It’s gets strange when you start looking at team and individual stats. On the season, the Cardinals had exactly one player who batted over .300, that being Lonnie Smith who hit .307 on the season. There were exactly two players who slugged more than eight homeruns, those two players being George Hendrick (19) and Darrell Porter (12). There were exactly two players who accounted for more than 69 RBIs, those two players being Hendrick (104) and Keith Hernandez (94). As a team, they had a total of 67 homeruns on the season. That’s an incredibly low 1 homerun every 2.41 games. Remember, Mark McGwire hit 70 homeruns by himself for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998.
Switching to the pitching staff. only one pitcher was able to record more than 84 strikeouts, that being staff ace Joaquin Andujar who had 137 Ks to go with a fine 15-10 record and ERA of 2.47. In what has to be an incredible anomaly, the entire pitching staff only record 679 Ks or 4.2 Ks per game.
The fact is the Cardinals took the title with mirrors. They were truly the Wizards of East St. Louis with speedster and defensive wizard Ozzie Smith leading the way. Under the guidance of Manager Whitey Herzog, they drove teams mad by running the base pads like rabbits and employing some of the best defense a team has ever put forth over an entire season. It’s a good bet the baseball world will never see another champ built quite the same way as the 1982 Cardinals.
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