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A new look at David Freese and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame

Some time has passed on David Freese's decision to decline his Cardinals' Hall of Fame induction, so we talked to those involved with the process to better understand why

2011 World Series Game 6 - Texas Rangers v St Louis Cardinals
2011 World Series Game 6 - Texas Rangers v St Louis Cardinals | Rob Carr/GettyImages
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Since it’s been a while, I thought I would take a new look at David Freese and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame (HOF).

On February 23, 2023, The St. Louis Cardinals HOF announced that Joaquín Andújar, Steve Carlton, David Freese, Matt Morris, and Edgar Renteria would be on the ballot for the fans to vote on.

Between 2/25/2023 and 4/21/2023 Cardinals fans cast over 40,000 votes.

On May 3, 2023, the St. Louis Cardinals announced that David Freese, Jose Oquendo, and Max Lanier would be inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame.

On June 17th David Freese released his statement letting everyone know he would not be accepting the offer to be in the Cardinals HOF.

This is the “what” part of the story. I want to explore the “how” and the “why”.

As soon as this happened I thought for sure the internet would break. As a Cardinals fan and as a David Freese fan, I was watching the Twitter sphere blowing up. People were angry at Freese, the Cardinals, and anyone connected with the Cardinals Hall of Fame. Some didn’t understand how he could have been nominated in the first place. No one could understand how he could turn something like this down. I completely lost track of all the conspiracy theories. Somehow, this was something else that Ollie Marmol should take the blame for.

And it was completely understandable. Cardinal fans are some of the most knowledgeable and passionate in baseball and they have no problem expressing their opinions. After all, Mr. Dewitt may own the team but we as fans feel like the Cardinals belong to us.

The only real information we had to work with was the statement that Freese issued. Everything else was just opinions. There was so much noise after his statement was released that Freese posted this on his Twitter account.

It doesn’t matter which Hall of Fame you want to talk about there are always controversies. There are those elected that you don’t think deserve to be included. There are others that you wonder why they are not in. I still can’t understand why Curt Flood isn’t in the MLB Hall of Fame. Also, why isn’t Peter Frampton in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

You get the idea. Halls of Fame are there to honor those that were selected. The good feelings we get from all that history and memories in one place are just a bonus for us fans.

When all this happened I found I had several questions. Like I said earlier, I wanted to look into the “how” and the “why”.

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