maddash wrote:cards2468 wrote:maddash wrote:I wouldn't put McGwire on that list, but that's just me.
McGwire was about the only reason people went to games in '98 and '99. He may not have been the face for long, but he was a pretty significant figure while he was here.
He brought major media attention to the Cards, no doubt about it, but I think in the end he was a ball player archiving great personal feats while wearing a Cardinals uniform. If you're going to stack him up against the other players listed, I don't know if it's the same thing. What was McGwire's big play that helped the team? I can't really think of one. If we're just talking about the face of the franchise at the moment, yeah he's that. But the list Omaha made, I just don't see him on it.
I don't consider him a Cardinals all-time great by any means, don't misunderstand, but if you're simply talking about "face of the franchise" there really wasn't a more talked about persona in all of baseball between 1997-2001 than McGwire.
When anyone nationally talked about the Cardinals, it was McGwire. Part of that was because there wasn't much else to talk about with that team from 1997-1999, but still, he was big time.
Just because all of that has been lost now, doesn't change what he meant to that team in that moment. Without McGwire, there's no 3,000,000 fans in 1998 and 1999. If you think about it, without him that could have altered the course of the franchise in the 00's and maybe TLR gets fired, maybe they don't go on the same run from 2000-2011. Who knows, but no matter what, McGwire was a huge presence in the history of the franchise for the time he was here. Explains why they had a statue commisioned of him before he ever even was on the hall of fame ballot.
