Is the St. Louis Cardinals-Chicago Cubs Rivalry on Life Support?
If the Cubs win the World Series this year, what will Cardinals and Cubs fans tease each other about?
It’s 2:00 PM on October 25, and in five hours, the Chicago Cubs are about to play in their first World Series game since 1945. If you’re a St. Louis Cardinals fan observing this World Series from afar, you might be wondering whether your beloved Cards-Cubs rivalry is currently on its death bed, destined for extinction if the Cubs win their first World Series in 108 years.
Here’s the question: if the Cubs win the World Series this year, can Cardinals fans ever really get back “on top” again? The bragging point for Cardinals fans over the years has been that they’ve got 11 World Series wins since 1926, while the Cubs have none since 1908, and that they’ve won 11 NL pennants since 1946, while the Cubs had won none since 1945. The pennant argument has already been shattered, and if the World Series plays out like many expect it to, the championship argument will be out the window too.
Sure, you’d still be able to argue that the Cardinals have 11 championships, while the Cubs only have three. But what fun is that? Plenty of rivalries could be built based on that talking point.
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There’s the Lou Brock-for-Ernie Broglio trade, plenty of brawls and beanball wars, and the obvious geographic proximity. But the Brock-Broglio trade isn’t quite on the same level as the Yankees and Red Sox’s Babe Ruth trade, and obviously the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry doesn’t have as much national TV backing as the Yankees-Red Sox one does. Off-the-field bloodshed over the rivalry, as has occurred with the Yankees-Sox and Giants-Dodgers rivalry? It’s just not nearly as prevalent. When you think about it, it’s tough to find a reason for outrage in the Cards-Cubs rivalry if the Cubs become successful.
It’d help matters if anyone who’d changed sides in the rivalry was a true “villain.” That way, even if the Cubs win the World Series, there’d be some lasting tension surrounding the fact that Cardinals fans legitimately hate one of the Cubs’ so-called “traitors.”
But how much more effort can Cardinals fans put into hating Jason Heyward? After signing an eight-year, $184 million-dollar deal with the Cubs this past offseason, Heyward slashed .230/.306/.325 and posted a career-low 1.5 rWAR this season, and he’s been epically bad in the postseason. If he continues to struggle this badly, it’s difficult to imagine him getting everyday playing time too much longer considering how much outfield depth the Cubs have.
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His replacement, Stephen Piscotty, vastly outperformed Heyward in every offensive category except walks and stolen bases, and he was roughly a win-and-a-half better according to rWAR. There’s plenty of time for Heyward to get better, but at this point Cardinals fans seem content to let the Cubs have him and laugh about the bad contract.
And have Cardinals fans ever even built up any real hate for John Lackey? Things might be different if he were the ace of the Cubs’ rotation. But he’s at best a number four starter in Chicago, and he really hasn’t made too much of a difference during the postseason, failing to last beyond four innings in either of his starts thus far. Lackey was well-liked in St. Louis, but he was also replaceable enough; while the Cards may have been just a bit more competitive if they had him in their rotation this season, it’s difficult to imagine him being a whole lot better next season than guys like Alex Reyes and Lance Lynn, who are expected to be full-time members of the 2017 rotation.
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Ultimately, there are going to be Cardinals fans who hate the Cubs no matter what, and the flamboyant manner with which the Cubs have coasted to success this year has only further infuriated those fans. If this incredible run of Cubs success continues, all the anger about unexplainable “Cardinals devil magic” may slowly shift to the Cardinals side of the rivalry. But as the Cardinals prepare for a bit of an organizational restocking project over the next few years, while the Cubs have enough talent to propel them to success for at least the next five or six years, Cardinals fans may just have to sit back and take it for a while once the “1908” comeback is no longer relevant.
The call-and-response that’s lasted for so long now–all of the stuff about what’s happened since the Cubs last appeared in or won the World Series, all of the jokes about their century of futility, every joke where the punchline is something involving 1908–that will all be history. In a rivalry that’s largely based on one team’s success and another team’s failures, there’s going to have to be some new talking points if the time-tested back-and-forth is to continue.
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Realistically, even if the Cubs win it all this year, there are always going to be Cardinals fans who hate the Cubs, just because that’s what they’ve done for their entire lives, and there are enough Cubs fans who have been traumatized by years of Cardinals success that they’ll hate the Redbirds forever. Wrigley will always be a fun place for Cardinals fans to take a weekend road trip (if Major League Baseball actually schedules weekend games there next year), and Busch Stadium will be the same for Cubs fans. But after two seasons of showdowns between a competitive Cardinals team and a Cubs team that was just the right mix of miserable and dominant, it’s fair to wonder if the rivalry has reached its peak and will just go downhill from here on out.