FanSided 250: St. Louis Cardinals fans should’ve been ranked higher

The St. Louis Cardinals deserved better in this year’s FanSided 250 after being ranked too low in all, especially in the MLB.

It’s a common phrase around St. Louis that the St. Louis Cardinals have the “Best Fans in Baseball.” I’m not sure if it’s known outside of our city that this is a thing, but at least around the National League, I would think people who closely follow baseball know it. If I’m honest, every fan base probably thinks they are the best fans, but Cardinals fans really are different.

Different than the fans in Wrigley Field where everything is a party, Cardinals fans are observant, intelligent, and never miss a chance to honor a former player or a milestone for a Cardinals player or not.

In this year’s FanSided 250, which ranks the top 250 fandoms of anything and everything, the Cardinals came in at #73. Now if that sounds low off the bat, you weren’t alone but looking at the top five:

1. Marvel
2. Los Angeles Lakers
3. Star Wars
4. Beyonce
5. Patrick Mahomes

This is quite the top five, and I guess it makes sense that those are where they are. The biggest problem I have with the FanSided 250 is that the Cardinals are the fifth-best MLB fandom. Now I’m not delusional enough to truly think that without a doubt the Cardinals are the #1 fandom in all of baseball, but they have to be at least top-three.

The four teams ahead of the Cardinals are the Nationals at #45, the Astros at #42, the Cubs at #40, and the Yankees at #14. That’s ridiculous in my opinion.

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The Nationals are only where they are because they just won the World Series. The Astros make sense for the same reason, the Cubs’ FanSided site even wrote themselves that they are too high, and I guess the Yankees make sense at #1 too.

If I were re-ranking the top fans, I would put Yankees #1, Dodgers #2, Cardinals #3, Astros #4, Nationals #5, and Cubs at #6. This is a yearly vote, so looking at strictly 2019, it again makes sense to see both the Nats and the Astros where they are.

More than that, what’s the best way to judge fandom? How about by how many fans attend the games. By that, the top five should be the Dodgers, Cardinals, Yankees, Cubs, Angels. That looks better.

Another metric possible to use is social media following. The Cardinals have 4.5M followers combined. The Yankees are in first with 14.5M, Red Sox in second with 9.2M, Dodgers in third with 7.7M, Cubs in fourth with 7.6M, then the Cardinals are in eighth place after the Giants, Blue Jays, and the Braves. However, looking at that list, Every city ahead of the Cardinals is a large market and has a much higher population. They do best compared to their population.

I don’t think I’m being too much of a homer arguing that the Cardinals fandom should be at least in the top three. At the end of the day, the FanSided 250 isn’t decided by only MLB fans, so I don’t blame them.

Not every Cardinals fan is the best in baseball, but for what its worth, we cheer hard and show up to games almost more than anyone else. That is to be commended even when the on-field product is less than inspiring at times.