December 13, 1987: The St. Louis Cardinals football team plays its last home game. It is 28 years to the day since the franchise played its last game as the Chicago Cardinals.
I saw this game on television. A kid held up a sign: DEAR SANTA: DON'T LET THEM TAKE MY TEAM. The Cards lost to the New York Giants, 27-24. They played 2 more games on the road, beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and losing to the Dallas Cowboys.
After being founded as an athletic club in 1898, the team that became the Chicago Cardinals were a founding franchise of the NFL in 1920. They won the Championship in 1925 and 1947, and reached the Championship Game again in 1948. But they lost the battle for Chicagoans' hearts and minds to the Bears, and moved to St. Louis in 1960.
They went 9-5 in 1963, 9-3-2 in 1964 (finishing 2nd in the NFL Eastern Division, qualifying for the "Playoff Bowl" against the 2nd-place team in the Western Division, the Green Bay Packers, and beating them), 8-5-1 in 1966, 9-4-1 in 1968, and 8-5-1 in 1970.
In 1974, they went 10-4. In 1975, they went 11-3. Both seasons, they won the NFC Eastern Division, but lost in the Divisional Playoff. In 1976, they went 10-4, but missed the Playoffs. So they were at least competitive for most of their run in St. Louis.
After some down years, they reached the strike-forced expanded Playoffs of 1982. As late as 1984, they were 9-7. But with the baseball Cardinals in a glory age, and the NHL's Blues also strong, and St. Louis never having really been a good football town, they struggled for attention and attendance.
After a pair of 11-loss seasons, they were only 7-8 in the strike-shortened 1987 season. This was in spite of CBS Sports' NFL oddsmaker, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, predicting a Super Bowl between the Cardinals and the Los Angeles Raiders. (The Raiders were even worse: 5-10, their worst finish in 24 years. That wasn't why CBS fired Snyder, but if it had been, the real reason wouldn't have happened, and he would have been better off.) When Bill Bidwill got the chance to move to Phoenix -- which had nearly gotten the Philadelphia Eagles in 1984 -- he jumped at the chance.
The NFL returned to St. Louis in 1995, when Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, a St. Louis native unhappy with her stadium situation in Anaheim, moved them into Busch Memorial Stadium, using it as a stopgap until what became known as the Trans World Dome, the Edward Jones Dome, and The Dome at America's Center opened in mid-season.
She died in 2008, and in 2010, her children sold the team to minority owner Stan Kroenke. After the 2015 season, unhappy with his lease at the Dome, he moved the team back to Los Angeles, and began building SoFi Stadium. That time, there was little outcry: Only 1,500 fans attended a protest at St. Louis' City Hall. Though plans for a replacement dome have been put forward, the NFL has no plans to expand to St. Louis, and no team owner wants to move to a city that has failed in the League 4 times, twice in the modern era.
UPDATE: The Arizona Cardinals have established a Ring of Honor. It includes all Chicago Cardinals in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio: John "Paddy" Driscoll, Ernie Nevers, Charlie Trippi, Marshall "Biggie" Goldberg, Dick "Night Train" Laine, Ollie Matson, 1947 NFL Championship coach Jimmy Conzelman, and team owner Charles Bidwill. It also includes all St. Louis Cardinals football figures in Canton: Larry Wilson, Jackie Smith, Roger Wehrli and Dan Dierdorf; plus non-Hall-of-Famers Jim Hart and Roy Green.
And from their Arizona years, through the 2025 season, it includes Aeneas Williams, Pat Tillman, Adrian Wilson, Kurt Warner and Carson Palmer. Presumably, Larry Fitzgerald will be inducted within the next few years.
Wilson, Smith, Wehrli, Dierdorf, Hart, Green, Jim Bakken, Johnny Roland, Jim Otis, Irv Goode, Bob DeMarco, Bob Rowe, Conrad Dobler, Terry Metcalf, Ottis Anderson, and coaches Don Coryell and Jim Hanifan have been elected to the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame.
Wilson, Smith, Wehrli, Dierdorf, Hart, Green, Otis, Goode, Dobler and Hanifan have been elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. So has running back Mel Gray.
Tillman, Fitzgerald, Jake Plummer, and moving owner Bill Bidwill have been elected to the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.
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December 13, 1987 was a Sunday. These other NFL games were played that day:
* The New York Jets lost to the New England Patriots, 42-20 at Sullivan Stadium (formerly Schafer Stadium, later Foxboro Stadium) in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts.
* The Miami Dolphins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-10 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
* The Washington Redskins beat their arch-rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, 24-20 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington.
* The Detroit Lions beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 20-10 at Tampa Stadium in Tampa.
* The New Orleans Saints beat the Houston Oilers, 24-10 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
* The Cleveland Browns beat their intra-State rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals, 38-24 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Buffalo Bills beat the Indianapolis Colts, 27-3 at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis.
* The Green Bay Packers beat the Minnesota Vikings, 16-10 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
* The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Los Angeles Raiders, 16-10 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
* The Los Angeles Rams beat the Atlanta Falcons, 33-0 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim).
* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the San Diego Chargers, 20-16 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.
* The Seattle Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos, 28-21 at the Kingdome in Seattle.
* The next night, on ABC Monday Night Football, the San Francisco 49ers beat the Chicago Bears, 41-0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA:
* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 113-99 at the Milwaukee Exposition and
Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 90-89 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in
Inglewood, California.
* And the Atlanta Hawks beat the Sacramento Kings, 106-100 at the original ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California. A replacement arena opened the next season, also with the ARCO name. Reggie Theus scored 35 in defeat for the Kings.
And there were 3 games in the NHL:
* The Calgary Flames beat the Buffalo Sabres, 7-1 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-1 at the Chicago Stadium.
* And the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 4-3 at the Winnipeg Arena.
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