Few and Chosen Cardinals: Defining Cardinal Greatness Across the Eras

This is a fine little book that provides thumbnail sketches of the greatest players, by position, for one of the greatest baseball franchises in the country. It has only one flaw, but it is a glaring one. In the section on catchers, Tim McCarver, who is probably the greatest Cardinal catcher of all time, does not list himself. Instead he chooses Hal Smith, an eminently forgetable player with the mediocre Cardinals teams of the 1950s, who could not hit his way out of a paper bag but supposedly did a great job with Cardinal pitchers. With McCarver behind the plate for much of the '60s, the Cardinals won three Pennants and two World Series. After he and Curt Flood were traded for Richie Allen, the team spent the '70s going nowhere. C'mon Tim, take the bow you deserve!