It's even worse when you look at average attendance. The Cards pack Busch night after hight, averaging over forty-two thousand per game. They only trail those bicoastal behemoths, the Yankees and the Dodgers. (More on the bicoastal thing later.)

On the road they're 21st in average attendance at about twenty-eight thousand.

Outside the St. Louis metropolitan area, the Cardinals must be the best-kept secret in baseball. This is one case where the accusation of bicoastal bias in the media really may have some truth. The national sports press goes gaga over the latest Yankee conniptions but barely notices that terrific team in the heart of flyover America.

With so little national media buzz it's hardly surprising that the Cards don't draw particularly well on the road. Last night the Red Sox drew an outlandish fifty-plus thousand crowd in Texas, thanks to endless media hype about the curse and other Sox lore. It's impossible to imagine the Cardinals attracting the same attention from the media, and thus the same kind of road crowds.

Maybe we can help the Cards out:

"The Curse of Willie McGee"
"The Curse of John Tudor"
"The Curse of Tommy Herr"

Hmmmm....they just don't sound as convincing to me. ;) And as a Yankee fan, I'd like to take this moment to congratulate the Cards for what they've done to put together a great team. Kudos to you guys and your fans.

The closest thing the Cards have is the curse of Don Denkinger. Of course, if That Call had happened to the Red Sox, we would never hear the end of it.

The only non-coastal team that seems to have much media buzz are the Cubs (thank you, billy goat and WGN). They're the only non-coastal team in the top five in average road attendance.

And, the Cards fans follow their team on the road, often 20% of the crowd in Milwaukee. But, they are just a good team, not a hated/loved entitty like the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, etc.

Trendy...that's why folks follow the Yanks and Sox. Too many dang trendy followers of baseball who probably care more about hat color (Ooohhh, this one's pretty!) than whether the Cards are a good team.

I promise I'd watch the Cards if there were a NL team in my city.

The teams at the top of the road draws are who you would expect -- Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs. But the other teams (assuming you're not ESPN and you believe that there *are* other teams) are all over the map. The A's are 10th in the AL in home attendance, but 4th on the road.

I expected to see the small market NL central teams at the bottom with St. Louis, but that is not the case. (16th belongs to the Phillies!) Perhaps the sample size is too small to tell us much; after half a season, scheduling vagaries and interleague play can make a big difference. (The Pirates played a three game series at Yankee Stadium to boost their road attendance. The Cards "rival" is the low-attendance Royals.)

Maybe it has something to do with people not wanting to go and watch their home team get smoked. That is the only explanation I can think of.

I consider myself extremely lucky to be a St. Louisian and to be able to see the Cardinals play almost every game.