What if the DeWitts moved the St. Louis Cardinals?

Sometimes, a baseball team and its city are so intertwined that it becomes a part of the fabric of that city. For the city of Oakland, that is indeed the case. The Athletics, and the Coliseum itself, are staples in the Bay Area. The franchise was once in Philadelphia and Kansas City, but it's called Oakland home for 58 years now.

That is all about to change.

John Fisher, the team's owner, is moving the A's to Las Vegas following a brief pit stop in Sacramento. This has caused fans of the Athletics to go through a gauntlet of emotions. What started as wrath became resentment and frustration. Now, the fans are mostly full of sorrow and despondency.

The loyal and proud fans of the Oakland Athletics are being left in ruins, and the city and sport of baseball are going to feel the ramifications of this unwarranted removal of the A's.

Since moving to Oakland in 1958, this historic franchise has seen 17 division championships, six American League pennants, and four World Series championships -- 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1989. The A's were the final team left in the Bay Area after the Golden State Warriors departed for San Francisco in 2019 and the Oakland Raiders skipped town for Las Vegas in the same year.

This isn't a story of fans losing interest in a team, quite the opposite, actually. This is the morose tale of a greedy owner, a compliant ownership group, and a league that is willing to leave its fans, its supporters, in the dust. The Oakland Athletics leaving the city will surely leave a mark on Major League Baseball for years to come.

While on the surface the A's move out of Oakland to Sacramento and Las Vegas doesn't directly relate to the St. Louis Cardinals, it does make me think: What if the DeWitt family moved the Cardinals, another historic franchise, out of St. Louis? After all, the two teams are in the bottom half of the league according to market size; Oakland is in the 29th-largest market in MLB, and St. Louis has the 19th-largest market.

The Cardinals are one of baseball's most honorable and famed franchises. The franchise boasts 11 World Championships, 19 National League Pennants, and 32 division crowns. Just like the A's in Oakland, the Cardinals are synonymous with the city of St. Louis.

If Bill DeWitt Jr. or Bill DeWitt III were to move the Cardinals out of the city, the reactions that we are seeing out of Oakland would probably be mirrored in St. Louis.

The St. Louis Cardinals and its brand are as much a part of St. Louis as Anheuser-Busch and the Gateway Arch are. Take away the Cardinals from the city, and the ramifications will be felt throughout the area.

From an entertainment perspective, St. Louis will go down to just one major sports team in the city that once held three. Summers will be widdled down to shows at the Muny, visits to the Zoo and Forest Park, and spending time at Union Station. No longer will there be day baseball games on the weekends or night games during the week.

Financially, those who work at and around the stadium -- vendors, the grounds crew, merchandisers, hotel owners, restaurant owners, and transportation groups -- will lose large portions of their income on which they are dependent. A baseball franchise provides quite a bit of revenue for a city.

However, the most difficult aspect of the situation would be the emotional toll that a move would have on the fanbase. The Cardinals have been in St. Louis since 1882; that's nearly five generations of fans that have watched this team play baseball in the city. Baseball is in the DNA of the city of St. Louis. If the DeWitt family moved the Cardinals out of St. Louis, fans would be emotionally distraught. Recall how fans felt after the Rams were moved out by Stan Kroenke a few years ago.

Fans were irate with owner Stan Kroenke when he moved the Rams out of the city in 2016. Andy Cohen of What What Happens Live said of the move at the time, "I can't forgive this. As a proud St. Louisan, I want to give you something on behalf of my hometown." A crude gesture involving specific fingers followed these words.

The Rams were in the city for only 20 years.; imagine what the reactions would be if a team that has been in St. Louis for nearly 142 years were moved abruptly out. There would be riots in the street; the DeWitt family would be berated infinitely more than Kroenke has ever been by the locals and the fans throughout the area.

It's a virtual impossibility that the DeWitt family would move the Cardinals out of St. Louis; they've invested quite a bit of money in the area around Busch Stadium. If anything, they'll sell the team before they move them. However, watching the reactions of fans of the Oakland Athletics, a franchise almost as historic as the Cardinals, can give us a hint of what it would look like if the Cardinals were plucked away from the city.