TOWER  GROVE — By now you’re probably weary of odes to Yankee Stadium — the long rhapsodies of writers saying farewell to our coliseum, the soft-focus interviews and wall-to-wall coverage of dirt-scooping and hand-print making, the video montages of cathedral memories from Spike Owen, Roberto Kelly, and Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens and other Yankee greats.

But there is one angle not yet covered about the condemned ballpark in the Bronx.

The Cardinals owned that place.

It was the launchpad for their greatness.

Yankee Stadium has hosted 16 clinching World Series games, and nine have been by the home team. The only other team to have twice clinched a World Series victory at Yankee Stadium is the Cardinals. As a franchise, the Cardinals went 9-7 at Yankee Stadium, 9-4 in the five World Series they played against the Yankees. Loyal reader and friend Frank Fuhrig spurred me to dig into the history of the Cardinals at Yankee Stadium and come up with the greatest moments for the Cardinals in the House that Ruth Built.

(Known locally as the House that Ruth Got Caught Stealing In and Therefore Launched the Cardinals Franchise to its First of 10 Titles.)

Mr. Fuhrig, an Illinois native and Washington bureau news editor for Deutsche Presse-Agentur, also dug through the box scores to discover that only one visiting team in baseball has won more World Series games at Yankee Stadium than the Cardinals. Using the invaluable Baseball-Reference.com — the Cooperstown of online resources — Mr. Fuhrig was able to get these tallies:

Dodgers … 10 (Brooklyn 6, LA 4)
Cardinals … 9
Giants … 5 (NY 4, SF 1)
Braves … 5 (Milwaukee 3, Atlanta 2)
Cincinnati … 3
Pittsburgh … 2
Florida … 2

Teams that have played the Yankees in the WS but with no Yankee Stadium wins: Cubs, Phillies, San Diego, Mets, and the Arizona Diamondbacks, who won the ‘01 Series 4-3 solely by winning at home.

In 2003, the Cardinals returned to Yankee Stadium to play a regular-season series there for the first and only time. They lost all three games, including one, 5-2, to the Yankees and starter Roger Clemens. That was Clemens’ seventh victory of the season, and the 300th of his career. (Where was he Sunday night?)

But even that game cannot crack the top historically significant moments for the Cardinals at Yankee Stadium. The top five — and feel free to disagree — are:

5. BABE RUTH IS CAUGHT STEALING (Oct. 10, 1926)

In the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1926 World Series, Cardinals pitcher Pete Alexander tempted fate by walking Ruth with two outs and a one-run lead. That brought up Bob Meusel, with Lou Gehrig looming on deck. Meusel did not have an RBI yet in the series, and just a year earlier he had cranked 33 homers and driven in 138 for the Yankees. Alexander fired a low curve to Meusel when something unexpected happened: Ruth broke for second base.

“Babe Ruth, the slowest regular on the Yankees and a guy who ran like he was ulling a trailer was trying to steal second,” Rogers Horsnby wrote later in his autobiography. ”Bob O’Farrell, my catcher, made a perfect throw to me at second base and I just held my glove out. Babe slide right into it for the final out. We were the world champions. Babe Ruth saw to that — it was the only mistake I ever heard of him making in about twenty-five years of baseball.”

Ruth later explained that he thought Alexander had forgotten about the runner and was going to take the offered base. Instead he was out easily. The great slugger popped up, shook Horsnby’s hand and the Cardinals’ place in baseball royalty began. The franchise’s first World Series championship was clinched on a caught stealing. The Cardinals Hall of Fame, located downtown, has a quirky souvenir from the first champs — a baseball signed by every member of the ‘26 club and crammed between the seams and Hornsby’s signature and interloper, a swirly intruder.

Babe Ruth signed it, too. No one is sure why.

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4. McCARVER WINS IT FOR GIBSON (Oct. 12, 1964)

In Game 5 of the 1964 World Series, Bob Gibson was dominant, shutting out the Yankees through 8 2/3 innings. Gibson struck out 12 in that span, including Mickey Mantle twice. Down to their final out and trailing 2-0, the Yankees had Mantle on base, via error, and left fielde Tom Tresh coming to the plate. Tresh played in three consecutive World Series with the Yankees, and he had at least a homer in each. This one tied the game with a two-run shot to right-center field.

The series was tied, 2-2, going into Game 5 and a victory at their home ballpark would mean going to St. Louis with only one to win. More importantly, the Yankees would steal a dandy start by Gibson and not face him until Game 7, if necessary.

In the 10th inning, Gibson’s catcher, Tim McCarver, flipped that script and answered Tresh’s home run to save Gibson’s performance. McCarver ripped a three-run home run off Pete Mikkelsen to give the Cardinals’ a 5-2 victory. Gibson pitched the 10th inning to cinch the victory and send the series back to Sportsman. 

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3. ROOKIE KUROWSKI’S HOMERS TO WIN SERIES (Oct. 5, 1942)

The Yankees and Cardinals split the first two games of the series, played at Sportsman’s Park, and off the Cardinals went, back to Yankee Stadium. “It was a thrill to play in Yankee Stadium,” Marty Marion told author Peter Golenbock years later. “Let me tell you something about playing in Yankee Stadium. Of all the places to play in baseball, that’s it. ‘The House That Ruth Built.’ It was just awesome. It was just a thrill to be in Yankee Stadium. It felt like you were in a mammoth arena, and it made you feel that you wanted to do better than you really could. Playing in Yankee Stadium made you feel important.”

In this series, rookie Whitey Kurowski became important.

The Cardinals, powered mostly by pitcher Ernie White’s shutout, took the first two games at Yankee Stadium and had no interest in giving Joe DiMaggio’s team any life. In Game 5, the score was tied, 2-2, in the ninth, when Kurowski ripped a Red Ruffing changeup into the seats in left for a 4-2 lead. Just like in ’26, the win was all but cinched at second base — where Joe Gordon was picked off in the ninth.

In six World Series games at Yankee Stadium, Kurowski, a third baseman for the Cardinals from 1941 to ‘49, would go 5-for-19 with five RBIs and five runs scored.

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2. BOYER’S GOES GRAND (Oct. 11, 1964)

The Cardinals trailed 2-1 in the best-of-seven series and 3-0 in Game 4, facing diminishing odds of rallying not only in the game, but in the series against the Yankees. Starter Ray Sadecki had been knocked from the game in the first inning, and reliever Roger Craig was soldiering through the leftover innings. In the sixth inning, Carl Warwick pinch hit for Craig and led off the inning with a single. Curt Flood followed with another single, and then the Yankees gave the Cardinals an extra out.

Dick Groat reached when Bobby Richardson flubbed a certain double play and allowed the Cardinals to load the bases. Ken Boyer, the league MVP that season, came to the plate. But why tell, when the beauty of the Internets is we can show: 

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1. OLD PETE K’S LAZZERI (Oct. 10, 1926)

Pete Alexander, “Old Pete” to his pals, had thrown nine winning innings against Ruth and the Yankees the day before, and legend says he came to the ballpark the next day looking like he’d gone nine more innings on pure, liquid celebration that night. Hornsby later recalled that Alexander, dozing in the bullpen, was “tight asleep when trouble comes.” Trouble was the bases loaded and the Cardinals clinging to a 3-2 lead and using a knuckleballer, Jesse Haines, who had blood dripping from a finger on his pitching hand. Coming to the plate was Tony Lazzeri, a rookie on his way to a Hall of Fame career.

Horsnby put the (wakeup) call in for Alexander, and he met the Hall of Fame-bound righthander in the outfield.

“I wanted to see if he could see,” Hornsby told the great sportswriter J. Roy Stockton. “So I told him we were ahead, but that the bases were filled, two out in the seventh, with Lazzeri at bat. I told him he was our best bet.”

Retellings differ on the exact phrasing and legend has certainly added a Hollywood edge to Alexander’s likely slurred response, but the righty said something like:

“I reckon I’d better strike him out.”

He did. He struck out Lazzeri. He finished the game. He got the win in Game 6, the “save” in Game 7 and that strikeout is captured on his Hall of Fame plaque as a “final crisis.” Far from final, that moment was not only the greatest moment for the Cardinals at Yankee Stadium, but it was the first of many great moments at the ballpark that will soon be reduced to rubble.

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There have been plenty of great articles recently about Yankee Stadium, starting with Tom Verducci’s cover story in last week’s issue of Sports Illustrated, written as if the walls could actually talk. … Fellow Times-Picayune alum Wright Thompson has this take from the last night in the Bronx, from ESPN.com. … Yankees beat writer Tyler Kepner has a pitch-perfect call on the curtain coming down Sunday night, pointing out that in time Derek Jeter’s address will echo like the other famous moments at the ballpark. …

Won’t bore you with my own ruminations on the ballpark, save to say it was always a castle of my youth, so faraway and so grand to a young baseball fan that it might as well have been The Parthenon. My first visit there was a rain-shortened or rained-out game. I stayed as long as I could. And then I went to the souvenir stand and bought a hat and a pinstriped onesie with baseball buttons. I didn’t have a kid. There wasn’t one on the way. Heck, this was awhile before I got married. But I knew that years from then I would be able to give my son or daughter a souvenir from my first visit to Yankee Stadium.

Many years later, in 2006, I did.

This year, I took that kid, now a toddler, to Yankee Stadium just so years from now he could say he went. He talks about it now, but in case he doesn’t remember it, we have pictures.

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