As baseball fans, we all love a good trade.
There is something immediately compelling about the moment a deal is announced: the speculation that precedes it, the instant reactions it sparks, and the endless debates about who won and who lost. Trades invite imagination. They force us to project the future, reassess the past, and ask how one decision might alter the course of a season or an entire franchise. Long after games fade from memory, trades remain reference points, shorthand for eras, philosophies, and turning points in baseball history.
That fascination with trades has been a recurring theme throughout my work on STLRedbirds.com. Since launching the site in 2020, I have written about a wide range of moments in Cardinals history, from championship seasons and iconic performances to managerial changes and pivotal debuts. Again and again, however, I found myself drawn back to trades. More than anything else, trades reveal how an organization thinks, how it evaluates talent, and how willing it is to take risks in pursuit of sustained success.
That ongoing exploration ultimately led to the publication of The Trades That Made the St. Louis Cardinals: Ten Deals That Defined a Century of Cardinals Baseball, now available on Amazon. This project builds directly on the foundation of STLRedbirds.com while leveraging a format that enables a much deeper, more comprehensive examination of Cardinals history.
The Trades That Made the St. Louis Cardinals tells the story of a century of Cardinals baseball through 10 defining deals spanning the 1920s through the 2010s. From franchise-altering gambles to trades that reshaped baseball history, the book examines how pivotal front-office decisions helped forge one of the most successful organizations in professional sports.
Each chapter focuses on a single trade, placing it firmly within its historical context and tracing both its immediate and long-term impact on the Cardinals, their trading partners, and the game itself. Along the way, readers revisit legendary names and unforgettable moments, including the trades that brought Curt Flood, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, and Adam Wainwright to St. Louis.
The book is deeply researched and meticulously documented, drawing on 365 cited sources, including contemporary newspaper accounts, biographies, and historical records. The goal was to capture the pressures, assumptions, and uncertainties that shaped these decisions and to present a precise, balanced analysis of how they ultimately played out.
In many ways, this book is a natural extension of STLRedbirds.com. The site provided the space to explore individual stories and test ideas; the book allowed me to step back and weave those stories into a broader narrative about organizational identity, decision-making, and adaptability across generations. The voice will be familiar to longtime readers, but the scope is broader and the analysis deeper.
Whether you are a lifelong follower of the Birds on the Bat, a student of baseball history, or simply a fan who appreciates how front-office decisions echo across decades, The Trades That Made the St. Louis Cardinals offers a new way to understand why this franchise has endured, evolved, and thrived.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. To purchase a copy, now available in ebook and paperback versions, please visit Amazon.com.
