VIVA LOS BIRDOS
The Cardinals rocketed to the National League pennant in 1967, winning it going away by 10½ games and closing out on Sept. 18 with 10 games and 13 days to go. Easy.
It started out auspiciously with an Opening Day shutout win for Bob Gibson, a home game on a beautiful St. Louis day that lasted 1 hour 55 minutes.
What a show these Cardinals put on as Orlando Cepeda won the MVP with every first-place vote. A July 5 win against the Reds illustrates it all nicely.
Catcher Tim McCarver came in second. Lou Brock had 206 hits and roamed leftfield, Curt Flood ranged across centerfield, and Roger Maris held down rightfield.
All of it is vivid through baseball on the radio as preserved in this commemorative album, an object that’s been a part of my life for 58 years. I was alive during this season, though not sentient. It is not possible I remember any of these radio calls. So how is it so vivid?
Just look at this album cover. Ballet, motion, excitement. Cool.
The Cardinals ‘67
A season narrated by Harry Caray and Jack Buck.
The Summer of Glove. Tune in, turn on, drop the hammer.
Bob Gibson broke his leg July 15 on a screamer off Roberto Clemente’s bat. He pitched to three more batters before coming out of the game.
He was out 55 days but came back to pitch the pennant clincher.
Caray spoke to Cepeda and Gibson in the celebrating clubhouse.
These were El Birdos, Harry Caray’s name for the lineup with Cha-Cha Cepeda leading the charge. The team won 101 games, spent 103 days of the season in first place, and won the season series against every other National League team except for the Pirates.
As smoothly as the season went, the Series against the Red Sox was closely fought and went to Game 7. Not that it was ever in doubt. Gibson was pitching that decisive game and few are the pitchers I would hand the ball in such a circumstance ahead of him. His was a performance that defies comparison.
He started three games of the World Series. He finished three games. He won them all.
Baseball on the radio brought all that home to listeners.
The Cardinals “baseball network grew to more than 100 stations across the Midwest and South. Until the major leagues expanded, there was no opposition in any of those areas,” Buck wrote in his autobiography “That’s A Winner.”
The team would return to the World Series again in 1968. There would be no commemorative recording. Detroit won the World Series, also in seven games.
Caray, often a vocal critic of players, managers, and owners, would make it through another two years, then get fired by Gussie Busch. Buck remained and grew into the voice of my summers, the narrator of my memories.