Remember when everyone (else) hated the Cardinals? All-Star week brought back a glimpse of it

Remember when everyone hated the Cardinals?

During the organization's duration of dominance that began in the early 2000s and stretched about a decade and a half later, the rest of the sports world pretty much universally found the Cardinals -- and their fans -- to be completely insufferable.

And why wouldn't it have been that way? The Cardinals always seemed to win. They did it with franchise icons and superstars. Then, sometimes, they did it with cult heroes and Devil Magic™.

No matter how they did it, for the majority of the start to the 21st century, the Cardinals won.

With it came a Cardinals fatigue from many pundits and other fan bases that grew tired of the consistent success of baseball in St. Louis -- and the way that the success was marketed to the masses with references to Baseball Heaven, the BFIB, etc. 

The last 10 seasons of Cardinal baseball have produced only four postseason appearances and just four singular playoff games won, the last of which came against the Padres in 2020. The Cards haven't won a playoff series since the 2019 NLDS over the Braves.

So, with the Cardinals organization falling on hard competitive times in more recent seasons, the general disdain from outside sports fans has largely dissipated. 

For a moment in time, at least, All-Star week seemed to bring it back.

Jordan Walker became the unlikely, and villainous, Home Run Derby champion, ruining the feel-good story for Kyle Schwarber in Philadelphia and receiving the attention he deserved for the feat. But that brought out the Hot Takery, with Barstool's Brandon Walker sideswiping at the Cardinals -- and the team's fans.

On a podcast in which Brandon Walker participates (don't ask me to tell you the name of it, I have no idea), he and his cohorts sounded off after the Derby in search of another team for Jordan Walker (of whom, they were complimentary) to play for.

They seemed to like and appreciate Walker's talents -- they just wanted to get him off the Cardinals.

Cardinals fans let Brandon Walker hear about it, so he had more to say about the Redbirds later in the week.

It bears mentioning that Walker is the same Barstool guy who, ahead of Missouri's football game against Alabama last season, thought he was doing the Tigers a favor by giving some publicity to little ol' Mizzou when he insisted that the game was the biggest game of Mizzou fans' lives.

Mizzou fans, because we have brains and have been alive longer than five minutes, understood that, actually, we have a sports history beyond the scope of Brandon Walker's fledgling attention to the program.So, we gave him trouble for it, and he deserved it.

He blocked me on Twitter as a result of that respectful exchange because he's softer than Charmin, but somehow, I still had to witness his brilliant Cardinals takes this week. Lucky me.

Anyway, Greg Cote of the Dan Le Batard Show weighed in as well this week, suggesting that Jordan Walker wasn't a deserving Derby participant because he hadn't hit enough home runs in his career prior to 2026.

The rest of the cast of this podcast did push back on Cote's take, which was mild enough as it was, but it was still notable to see another example of the power of hate fueling folks in the way they talk about the Cardinals -- just like the good ol' days, eh?