Vibe check: Soaring Cardinals completely remix ’reset’ expectations for 2025

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“Change the atmosphere at the ballpark and start to mirror the scrappiness and the feistiness and that vibe that you talk about of this team. It is very interesting that for the last few years they’ve had a very stoic team and a very stoic ballpark. This is not a stoic team. This is a kinetic team. It’s time to have a kinetic ballpark.”

PHILADELPHIA -- The wake of the Cardinals roll to a series win at the rocking Citizens Bank Park against the Phillies, Post-Dispatch sports writers Jeff Gordon and Derrick Goold discuss if expectations should change for the 2025 Cardinals after they won nine consecutive games and 10 of 11. The Cardinals' stated goal in this "transition" year is to be better in May than they were in April and better in June than they were in May.

A brand new Best Podcast in Baseball explores this question: When they have a May that puts them within one game of the National League Central lead and earns them the longest winning streak of the month in the National League, then haven't they rewritten what it means to be better in June?

Gordon, a sports columnist, and BPIB host Goold, a baseball writer, note how the Cardinals clearly have buy-in from the players, and next would be buy-in from fans before the ultimate test.

Does this team get buy-in from ownership to add what it needs for a legit run toward October?

Gordon suggests that the style of baseball and success of May should lead to more fans at the ballpark, and that prompts a bit of a rant from Goold about the atmosphere at Busch Stadium. The Phillies drew 40,000 to a Monday game in South Philly, and they had pulsating, jamming crowds for a doubleheader despite poor weather. The Cardinals need to borrow from some of their rivals, and that starts with having a player choose a singalong walk-up song (ala Bryson Stott) that gets the whole crowd involved and part of the experience and then finally identifying and adopting a victory song for all the fans to sing at the end of home wins. 

The Cardinals have had a businesslike and stoic team for years and the ballpark reflected that often.

This is no longer that team. The team should embrace that, own that, and make that part of the ballpark experience.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.