Incredible winning streak at Busch Stadium ends in shame for Cardinals fans

The St. Louis Cardinals have not been particularly good this season. In fact, they have been the opposite of good – what's the word I'm looking for, oh yes – bad! The Cardinals are a bad baseball team. Not as bad as the Chicago White Sox, but certainly not as good as the Milwaukee Brewers.

John Mozeliak laid out a plan for 2023 to be competitive, and much of that plan had to do with increased investment in the starting lineup. However, Sonny Gray hasn't quite lived up to his lofty expectations, and the Cardinals' lineup is now lacking. Don't believe me? Just ask catcher Willson Contreras.

“There are some areas that need to be addressed,” Contreras said Sunday. “I don't know if the front office will do that, but … we haven't come together at all on offense all year. There are also a lot of holes in the lineup, from 1 through 9…”

Contreras then directly challenged management to dominate the NL Central, something they have failed to do over the past few seasons. Basically, you get what I mean: If the Cardinals players don't believe in themselves, why should the fans?

With that in mind, it's no surprise that fans don't flock to Busch Stadium to watch every home game this team plays. At one point earlier in the season, the Cardinals looked like they could compete, but that time is over. Even in St. Louis, there are better ways to spend a weekend series than watching the Cardinals lose again.

Now that St. Louis' last home game is over – it ended in a 2-1 victory over the Cleveland Guardians – the numbers are in. The Cardinals did not surpass the 3 million mark in fans in 2024. According to Katie Woo, this is the first time that has not happened since the newest Busch Stadium opened in 2006. The official attendance was 2,869,783, good enough for seventh place in the major leagues.

That might not sound too bad for a team that hasn't been in the playoff race since late August, but these fans aren't satisfied with seventh place. In fact, the Cardinals pride themselves on having the best fans in baseball. But even those fans have their limits, and Mozeliak, Oli Marmol and Bill DeWitt have thoroughly tested them this season.