St. Louis Cardinals: The decade’s 12 most memorable moments

4. The death of Oscar Taveras (Oct. 26, 2014)

Not all of my memories are good ones. Oscar Taveras looked to be a generational talent. But we’ll never know if he would have lived up to it, because he died in a car accident after his rookie year.

While Taveras didn’t stun the world after his arrival in the big leagues, people were hungry to see what he would become. His home run in Game 2 of the 2014 NLCS tied the game and brought a torrent of rain with it, but it was to be his only career highlight.

His death led to an unexpected hole in the outfield that the Cardinals have tried to fill for years. Baseball is a game where front offices must continually adapt, but a loss of this magnitude that was this sudden has been hard to overcome.

3. The Rally Squirrel (Oct. 5, 2011)

A gray squirrel in the outfield briefly halted play in Game 3 of the 2011 NLDS on Oct. 4 against the Philadelphia Phillies. Nobody thought much of it, and indeed, it was merely a prologue. A squirrel — it was never confirmed if it was the same one — appeared again in Game 4, interrupting Skip Schumaker‘s at-bat.

The Cardinals went on to win the game and the series. A legend was born, and it only grew with each series the Cardinals won. Twitter accounts, T-shirts and Halloween costumes of the Rally Squirrel boomed, and when the Cardinals won the World Series, the squirrel was aptly immortalized on the team’s rings.