Today, the St. Louis Cardinals officially announced they have signed SP Dustin May.

It’s a one-year deal worth $12M with a $20M mutual option for 2027.

That is news, but it’s just the tip of the story.

Dustin May, who has worn the number 85 every year since becoming a major league, will be doing something many players don’t like to do. He will be changing his number as part of going to the Cardinals. He has no choice.

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The reason he has no choice is because the Cardinals have already retired the number 85, in honor of their former owner August Anheuser Busch Jr., colloquially known as Gussie.

Gussie Busch never played for the Cardinals, but he was so instrumental in the success and lore of the franchise that in 1984, for his 85th birthday, the team retired the number 85 in his honor.

While Gussie Busch oversaw the franchise winning 6 National League pennants and 3 World Series titles, it was his purchase of the team in 1953 that forever changed the futures of three baseball cities and two franchises.

After the 1947 season, the then-owner of the St. Louis Cardinals was Sam Breadon. Breadon was terribly ill with cancer, and he was struggling to find a new site to build the Cardinals their own stadium. Since 1920, the Cardinals were rent-paying tenants at Sportsman’s Park, owned by their American League inter-city rivals the St. Louis Browns.

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Breadon had also set aside $5M to build a new stadium and was coming to the end of the five year window to build that stadium before he would have to pay taxes on that $5M. All of those things together conspired to push Breadon to sell the franchise. Fred Saigh would pay him $4M to purchase the Cardinals late in 1947.

Five years later, Saigh faced his own financial woes, as he was indicted on federal tax evasion charges in 1952, and accepted a plea deal in January 1953.

In February 1953, MLB Commissioner Ford Frick pressured Saigh to sell the team, essentially threatening to run him out of baseball if he didn’t. While Saigh put the team up for sale as requested, there was really only one credible offer, and it would not be from anyone in St. Louis.

The Cardinals owned a Texas League affiliate called the Houston Buffaloes, often referred to as the Buffs. MLB rules at the time stated that major league teams owned the future MLB rights to cities of which they had minor league affiliates. Hence, it would have been no problem for the Cardinals to be purchased and moved to Houston.

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It almost happened.

Houston oil tycoon and philanthropist George Strake (the same man whom Houston’s Strake Jesuit High School is named after) led a consortium together with former Cardinals shortstop and manager Marty Marion and Ray Powers to buy the Cardinals and move them to Houston. The Cardinals would then re-fit Buffalo Stadium to be major league caliber while building a new ballpark for the franchise.

Their offer: a reported $4.1M.

Enter Gussie Busch.

With Saigh about to close with the Houston consortium, Busch entered the bidding with an offer of $3.75M and a pledge to keep the team in St. Louis, where Busch was leading the family business (Anheuser-Busch) to becoming the biggest brewery in the world and growing from their first location in St. Louis to a total of nine breweries.

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Why Busch was able to win the bidding with a lower bid has several angles. First, the idea Busch convinced Saigh of his civic duty to keep the team in St. Louis, that his civic duty was more important than money. Second, that Saigh wanted to find a local businessman who would keep the team in St. Louis all along. Thirdly, that Busch’s all cash offer was of greater interest to the financially troubled and soon-to-be jailbird Saigh as he wanted all of the funds available to him immediately. You can probably figure out which one was the most likely reason.

With the power of Anheuser-Busch now behind the Cardinals, the owner of the Browns (Bill Veeck) knew he would lose the battle for the city as he could not compete with the Cardinals’ new owner financially. After years of trying to force the Cardinals out of St. Louis, the defeated Veeck sold Sportsman’s Park to the Cardinals and sold the Browns to a group from Baltimore that would rename the team the Baltimore Orioles and move the team for the start of the 1954 season.

After purchasing Sportsman’s Park, the Cardinals renovated the stadium extensively and renamed it Busch Stadium. The team played there until mid-1966 when the new Busch Memorial Stadium opened.

Houston would have to wait 9 more years before being awarded a National League expansion team.

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In the end, the Cardinals stayed in St. Louis, the Browns became the Orioles, and Houston would eventually be awarded the Colt .45s, later renamed the Astros. It all happened because of the one man whom the Cardinals retired number 85 for, and that is why Dustin May will have a new number this season.