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At the time, the Cardinals had been renting the use of Sportsman Park as the ballpark was not owned by the Cardinals, but instead to their crosstown rivals the St Louis Browns. The Cardinals moved in as tenants in 1920 after their own ballpark, Robison Field and one of the last of the wooden ballparks, was considered obsolete.
After beating the Browns in the 1944 World Series and clearly becoming St Louis’ team, the Cardinals started exploring building their own ballpark. In 1949, Cardinals new owner Fred Saigh put forth the sketch you see here, a three-deck horse shape ballpark in the Streamline Moderne style, a design popular since the 1930s.
But Saigh was also quite evasive when pushed on where this new modern ballpark would be built, only assuring the press it would be on 18 acres of land that he personally owned and set aside $5 million to finance it.
But before Saigh could break ground he was indicted on tax evasion charges and in January 1953 was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Commissioner Ford Frick pressured Saigh to sell the team and he finally relented in February 1953 when Anheuser-Busch purchased the team for $3.75 million.
At about the same time the struggled cash-strapped Browns, now owned by the colorful Bill Veeck, were struggling badly at the gate. But Veeck, always an opportunist, saw the light at the tunnel with Saigh being sent to prison and had high hopes of driving the Cardinals out of town. But when Anheuser-Busch took ownership of the Cardinals, Veeck saw the writing on the wall knowing he couldn’t compete with the beer company’s resources, so he sold Sportsman Park to them for $800,000 and bolted to Baltimore and changing the name of the Browns to the Orioles.
In turn Anheuser-Busch, now owners of Sportsman’s Park started to put money into the ballpark and renovating it, thus killing and prospects of a new ballpark in St Louis and making this drawing a cool afterthought.
So the browns moved to Baltimore and took the name of a bird? Both football and baseball, and so it goes.