- Ozzie Smith has more defensive WAR than any other MLB player in history
- According to Wikipedia the Cardinals used to be the Browns, which spawned another St Louis team named the Browns who were an American Association team; the Cubs were originally the White Stockings!
- Historically, the Cardinals invented the idea of a farm system because of Branch Rickey… which makes it all the more poignant and, honestly, disappointing, that the current ownership did not keep up with the contemporary version of a farm system, which should be the #1 goal of Cardinals teams
- The Cardinals also have made some smart trades over the years in addition to possessing a good farm system, so hopefully they will acquire some proven players one of these years to upgrade the team into serious contention… Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, and Matt Holliday were pretty fun, eh?
- Because they usually spend their money well, they can rather occasionally outbid someone if they are seeking a particular free agent; but they will wait for an offseason with a good, opportunistic free agent class
- Rogers Hornsby has not one but two batting triple crown awards
- Dizzy Dean had a 30 win season(!)
- Stan Musial was one of the best baseball players of all time with 17 MLB and 29 NL records
- In 1968 Bob Gibson was the NL MVP and NL Cy Young, threw over 300 IP at 1.12 ERA, and threw 17 K in Game 1 of the World Series that year (he was also good at basketball and was a Globetrotter earlier in life)
- Albert Pujols hit over 700 home runs and collected over 3,000 hits!
- Through 2025, the Cardinals’ all-time win-loss record is 11,363–10,486–152 (.520)
- The Cardinals have won the most World Series out of any NL team (11 World Series wins puts them at an average of one world series win every 11 years)
- Only the Dodgers and Giants have 20 or more NL pennants… the Cardinals are stuck at 19
- Whenever Oliver Marmol departs whether it’s years from now due to retirement, or after a year or two because of whatever, the next manager will be the 30th manager of the St Louis Cardinals (32nd if you include pre-1900 American Association history as original Browns)
- Cardinals players have won 21 MVPs, 4 triple crowns, 3 Cy Young awards, and 18 Hall of Famers were inducted
Happy New Year’s Eve, VEB!
I have been compiling my best of 2025 music lists! One is for best albums, the other is for best songs. So for the next few weeks, you can either enjoy the end of my articles for a lot of 2025 music coverage, or stop reading after the first section and ignore the new music. There will of course always be baseball first. Tip a few back tonight or do whatever you do to get down, you probably have tomorrow off. Or if you’re going to be working on New Year’s Day like me, have fun
still! Maybe this will be a soundtrack for part of your evening.
Albums of the Year 2025
For me, it wasn’t quite as exciting a year for music as 2023 and 2024, but there was still a lot of good stuff. My go to for more months out of the year was:
Holy Scum – ‘All We Have Is Never’ is that aggro party album you never get to put on at the party but you listen to in headphones or in the car and jam out to alone a lot. Sure your drinking buddy might like it too but this is just average every day stomp through it and get stuff done while being in a mood about it, good or bad.
Next up is a band that uses atonality and avant black metal stylings along with an actual pipe organ! That’s their whole schtick anyway, and has been for a while. This is only their third album though, with the first laying down the blueprint for this particular style which only Lychgate performs, the second delving more into prog metal territory, and the third going off the deep end of abstraction.
But somehow this album is catchy, i don’t really understand why but it is:
This album appears to only be on bandcamp, for now. It’s so good! One of the few albums I actually listened to start to finish upon first play this year. It has me captivated.
Next, I’d like to talk about an old favorite of mine, the band Grails. They were one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen back in the late 11’s, but they never really have captured the old magic back when they started out. Well this new one does the trick, but in a different way. And the result is Grails best album in years!
YouTube Music if you prefer (I hope to switch to qobuz or tidal soon but I’ve found youtube to be universal)
I enjoyed every track off those first three albums and would consider them for my Album Hall of Fame if they weren’t so new. Next I’d like to talk about the return of legendary New Orleans band Acid Bath and their singer Dax Riggs, who put out a new album early in 2025. It’s not heavy metal like Acid Bath but old time fans might still like it, straddling several categories in the alt rock, post punk, and death rock genres.
Bandcamp:
Next up time for something completely different, an all instrumental transcendental band called Neptunian Maximalism from Brussels. World music meets doom and ambient?
YouTube Music:
Neptunian Maximalism sounds a bit pretentious but when you get past the very mystical song titles etc and go along for the ride, you will immerse yourself in one of the highest quality recordings of some of the deepest sounds you’ll ever hear. A dark, mystical experience awaits in ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu’.
Next up is Chicago’s post-rock originators Tortoise with their first album in years! ‘Touch’ finds them perfecting their sound on a micro level while serving up some of their most catchy material. Subtle with hooks; it took me a few listens to get more into it.
YouTube Music:
This album grows on you with each listen, good to have Tortoise back! Plenty of variety on this album, different approaches, different styles of music, but one of their more song oriented offerings as well. All instrumental.
Speaking of midwestern musical talents, I cannot leave St Louis’ own Yowie’s new album ‘Taking Umbrage’ even though I have yet to quite wrap my mind around it. It took me a while to get into Yowie’s first album, but I warmed up to the second and third albums with that particular lineup, which was still rather peculiar but a little more catchy. With Yowie’s 4th album, the incomprehensibility is dialed up highest and I’m just not sure what to do with it, other than slowly try to pick it apart in small doses and sparse listens.
YouTube Music:
Interlocking guitar and drum parts in polyrhythmic cartoon-like fashion? The most mathy prog rock out there? Or maybe the most funky math rock possible? Is it even funky or is it just weird? These are the questions without answers. It’s Yowie and one of the most abstract, bizarre yet hyper-composed bands you’ll ever hear.
Best EPs of 2025
This EP will hunt you down and kill you but it will make it very interesting! Artistic, even. In under 15 minutes.
Here’s another short and sweet EP, this time more melancholy and in the shoegaze genre, by a band called easterlin. EP titled ‘reverb claymore’:
Next week I will go over Honorable Mentions, which are also mindblowing listens, but maybe not completely start to finish perfect albums. There are some really good albums in the Honorable section! Some of which will probably be on some of your year end lists if you’re a big music dork like me.
Back to baseball next week though, consider this an open thread for the second Eve in a row! Hopefully the Cardinals will make another move and I’ll have a full baseball article for you, thanks for reading. And Happy New Year. Hopefully the Cardinals will somehow be better next year, even if it’s just .500. Plenty of offseason hot stove to go in 2026!
