1954 St. Louis Cardinals

St. Louis's Lone Baseball Team
1954 marked the first year that the city of St. Louis only had one major league baseball team, with the Browns moving to Baltimore and becoming the Orioles. The Cardinals had finished in 3rd place the previous three seasons, but with the town to themselves, they fell to 6th place in 1954. Before the season, they traded away a hall-of-famer to the Yankees, Enos Slaughter, but replaced him with the 1954 NL Rookie of the Year, Wally Moon. They also picked up shortstop Alex Grammas from the Reds. Stan Musial was the offensive leader on this team, leading the team in all of the triple crown categories. He led the team in home runs, nearly doubling the 2nd best home run hitter, Rip Repulski 35 to 19. Harvey Haddix leading the pitching staff, leading the team in wins and strikeouts.

Starter and Hall-of-Fame/All-Star Scores

Exclusive players to a set are in italics

Topps Regulars (11): Bill Sarni, Ray Jablonski, Alex Grammas, Rip Repulski, Wally Moon, Solly Hemus, Harvey Haddix, Tom Poholsky, Stu Miller, Joe Presko, Cot Deal

Bowman Regulars (8): Red Schoendienst, Rip Repulski, Solly Hemus, Vic Raschi (shown with Yankees), Al Brazle, Jerry Staley, Stu Miller, Joe Presko

Topps All-Stars & Hall-of-Famers (2): Ray Jablonski, Harvey Haddix

Bowman All-Stars & Hall-of-Famers (1): Red Schoendienst

The Cardinals give an advantage to Topps. The only key player on a card in 1954 missing in the Topps set is hall-of-famer Red Schoendiest. There are actually several regulars who are missing in both sets: 1st baseman Joe Cunningham, 1st baseman Tom Alston, pitchers Brook Lawrence, Gordon Jones, Royce Lint, and Ralph Beard. Also missing in both of these sets of course is the biggest Cardinal omission of all...Stan Musial. But you could get a 1954 card of Stan Musial, you just had to look at the Red Heart set in 1954. More on that set below.

Red Heart
The Red Heart set consisted of 33 cards. They were distributed nationally with dog food. Yes dog food, although, this isn't the only time I have seen this happen. I am covering 1984 (well at least slowly), and there was a 33 card set distributed with dog food by Ralston Purina. I specifi

cally remember getting those cards in bags of dog food. Anyway, to see the complete set of 1954 Red Heart cards, check out this website which has a scan of all 33 cards in the set.

This, of course is the only set to get a Stan Musial card in 1954. Supposedly, the big guns (Topps and Bowman) didn't pay him what he thought he was worth, but Red Heart had no problem. They also had a Mickey Mantle card in the set. How these cards were obtained was by sending in labels of dog food to get one set of 11 cards. This explains why the cards have three different background colors (blue, green, red). Rumour has it that these cards may have been available to order as late as the 1970s.

Starters

__	TO	194	C	Bill Sarni	STL
__			1B	Joe Cunningham
__	BO	110	2B	Red Schoendienst	STL
__	TO	26	3B	Ray Jablonski	STL
__	TO	151	SS	Alex Grammas	STL
__	TO	115	LF	Rip Repulski	STL
__	TO	137	CF	Wally Moon	STL
__	RH	23	RF	Stan Musial	STL
__	TO	117	SS	Solly Hemus	STL
__			1B	Tom Alston

Starting Pitchers

__	TO	9	SP	Harvey Haddix	STL
__			SP	Brooks Lawrence
__	TO	142	SP	Tom Poholsky	STL
__			SP	Gordon Jones
__	BO	33	SP	Vic Raschi	NYY

Relief Pitchers

__	BO	142	CL	Al Brazle	STL
__	BO	14	RP	Jerry Staley	STL
__			RP	Royce Lint
__			SP	Ralph Beard
__	TO	164	RP	Stu Miller	STL
__	TO	135	RP	Joe Presko	STL
__	TO	192	RP	Cot Deal	STL

Other Players

__	BO	30	C	Del Rice	STL
__			UT	Joe Frazier
__	TO	158	OF	Peanuts Lowrey	STL
__	BO	78	C	Sal Yvars	STL
__			RF	Tom Burgess
__			1B	Steve Bilko
__	TO	191	SS	Dick Schofield	STL
__	BO	174	3B	Pete Castiglione	STL
__			RP	Ben Wade
__			RP	Mel Wright
__			RP	Hal White
__	TO	118	RP	Carl Scheib	PHA
__			SP	Bill Greason
__	BO	222	SP	Memo Luna	STL