The St. Louis Cardinals lost an extra-inning nail-biter to the American League West-rival Los Angeles Angels on Monday night but losing the game wasn’t the only disappointing sight.
Toward the end of last year’s season-to-forget, the Cardinals set record lows for attendance at Busch Stadium. After back-to-back years of St. Louis missing the playoffs by a long shot, the fan base has seen enough and demands change, particularly with management.
However, Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak remains at the helm and the front office has done little to help the franchise’s future this past offseason. Consequently, St. Louis’ fan base will protest by refusing to attend home games.
“A crowd of 21,206 purchased tickets for tonight’s game at Busch Stadium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold reported Monday night. “That is, by a significant margin, the smallest full-capacity crowd in ballpark history.”
Considering that the Cardinals set a record-low announced attendance of 27,224 fans at Busch Stadium on Aug. 27th last season during a 5-7 loss to the San Diego Padres, it’s shocking to see that only 21,206 tickets were sold at Monday night’s series opener against the Angels.
Not only did St. Louis experience a dramatic decrease in ticket sales during Monday night’s loss but that also means even fewer attended. For anyone who watched the series opener against the Angels, it was evident that far fewer than 21,206 fans were in attendance.
What message does this send to the Cardinals’ front office? For one, it tells Mozeliak and ownership that fans are fed up with being told to wait for things to improve. After Mo’ promised an organizational reset last fall and basically did nothing over the winter, the St. Louis faithful want nothing to do with spending their hard-earned money to watch a game at Busch Stadium.
What’s sad is that this season’s youth-laden roster, mixed with several remaining veterans, is determined to give Cardinals fans an entertaining season. Sadly, the wounds incurred from poor decisions made by the franchise’s front office might cut too deep for the fan base to give the 11-time World Series champions a chance this year.
Mozeliak should’ve stepped down after last season, passing the torch to Chaim Bloom but instead, he decided to hang around for another year while enduring a pathetic final offseason as the club’s baseball boss.
The boos Mo’ and the DeWitt family received on Opening Day echoed the frustrated voices and opinions from millions of Cardinals fans. Monday night’s underwhelming showing solidifies the fan base’s stance — ownership and management need dramatic restructuring.
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