Cardinal Logo and Nickname Colerain, Louisville, St. Louis and State Bird

After getting the news of the day, which is Aroldis Chapman's move to the disabled list, Cincinnati manager Dusty Baker took a look at my jacket.  I am a graduate and former player at Colerain High School, the Cardinals.

After a contentious series sweep of the Cardinals of St. Louis, Baker wondered why I'd where the jacket.  I told him that the logo had nothing to do with his division rival, but it was the Colerain mascot.

It prompted a discussion of the Ohio state bird which is the Cardinal  Baker mentioned what a pretty bird it was and that he had recently seen one.  That discussion led to the following research.

The Cardinal  cardinalis cardinalis is found not in trees but in bushes and hedges.  It's habitat is on the periphery of woodlands.  When Ohio was settled in the early 1700's the state was 95 percent forested.  The bird began to appear on the edges of the forest as settlers cleared the woods for farming.  By the 1800's the bird was common in the state.  By mid-century it was found in all 88 counties of Ohio.

The state legislature made the Cardinal the state bird in 1933.

The Redbird, another commonly used name for the species, is also the state bird for Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, Virginia and North Carolina.  It is by far the most common among state birds.

So, how did the St. Louis team become the Cardinals?  Was the Cardinal the state bird in Missouri?

The state bird of Missouri is the Bluebird since 1927, the year after the St. Louis franchise won the World Series with Rogers Hornsby and Grover Cleveland Alexander over the New York Yankees with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

St. Louis baseball entry into the Major Leagues started in 1882 in the American Association.  At the time the city name was the only identification teams had.  As sportswriters and fans of the day desired to be more creative and less redundant, they came up with nicknames for the teams.  St. Louis was known as the Browns or Brown Stockings to signify the color of the uniform.  In 1899 the uniform color was changed to red by team owners.  The team was briefly called the Perfectos by the press.  The team owners came from Cleveland and stripped that team of its best players.  When the team failed to live up to expectations finishing fifth instead of winning the league title, William McHale of the St. Louis Republic started calling the team the Cardinals.  The uniform color matched the traditional vestments of the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church.

Rogers Hornsby with Bird Logo

By 1900 the Cardinal nickname was widely used for the team.  St. Louis was written across the jersey or the STL that is interlocked.  The word Cardinal was first written on jerseys in 1918.  In 1922, the team put the logo with the Cardinal bird on the bat.

I was under the mistaken impression that Colerain's Cardinal connection was linked to the state bird but the school district was formed by five one-room school houses until 1924.

Now here is the rest of the story taken from the Colerain Alumni Association site.

Colerain Baseball Team 1925

Richard Joyce, Class of 1925, related in 1989 that an essay contest was held to name the school’s mascot.  At the time, there were three outstanding professional baseball teams: the Cincinnati Reds, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the St. Louis Cardinals.  Joyce submitted his essay stating that because the Cardinals were the best team at the time that Colerain should also be called the Cardinals because he felt that Colerain should be identified with the best as well.  His presentation was so convincing that the students, faculty, and administration overwhelmingly supported his proposal and Colerain has been the Cardinals ever since.


Sorry Dusty.

Before the Machine by Mark Schmetzer