PHOTOGRAPH by wes hale
Luken Baker, 2023 International League MVP
I love the cumulative effect of baseball. The way moments, games, seasons, and eras grow right before our eyes, as slowly but just as surely as the greenest outfield grass on the planet. Sit in a ballpark for one game and you may well see something you’ll never see again. (If you’ve seen a no-hitter live, you’ve seen one more than I have, and my home away from home is AutoZone Park.) Visit a ballpark with any regularity, and those games — those moments — will start to pile up and, before you can sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” you’ve witnessed baseball history.
Our Memphis Redbirds are playing their 26th season. A quarter-century is enough time to make an imprint on baseball history, and well beyond the footprint of our downtown ballpark. As the Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, Redbirds alumni have been a part of four National League championships and two World Series victories. A pair of the most famous alumni — Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina — could become the first former Redbirds to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame when they become eligible in 2028. But I have a few more cumulative nuggets to tickle your thinker the next time you’re at the ballpark.
Seven former Redbirds have gone on to earn MVP honors in a League Championship Series, though not all with the Cardinals. It’s an astonishing stack of achievements on the game’s near-brightest stage, and yes, they were “yesterday’s stars” in Memphis.
Entering the 2000 season — the franchise’s 109th in the National League — the St. Louis Cardinals had seen only two players homer in their first big-league at-bat. Over the last 24 years, no fewer than seven Redbirds alumni have gone yard in their first time at the plate in a major-league stadium. In July 2000, Keith McDonald became only the second big-league hitter to homer in his first two at-bats. (The other six: Chris Richard, Gene Stechschulte, Adam Wainwright, Mark Worrell, Paul DeJong, and Lane Thomas. Three of these men were pitchers, for those DH-haters in the crowd.)
The Redbirds like to tell us that we’re seeing tomorrow’s stars today when we watch a Triple-A game in downtown Memphis. And they are as precise as a Greg Maddux change-up. Seven former Redbirds have gone on to earn MVP honors in a League Championship Series, though not all with the Cardinals: Adam Kennedy (2002 ALCS, Angels), Pujols (2004 NLCS), Placido Polanco (2006 ALCS, Tigers), David Freese (2011 NLCS), Michael Wacha (2013 NLCS), Randy Arozarena (2020 ALCS, Rays), Adolis Garcia (2023 ALCS, Rangers). It’s an astonishing stack of achievements on the game’s near-brightest stage, and yes, they were “yesterday’s stars” in Memphis.
The most casual of baseball fans may only tune in for the All-Star Game each July, a chance to see the game’s best in one nine-inning affair. Every All-Star Game since 2003, folks, has featured a former Memphis Redbird. Pujols and Molina were regulars, of course, but do you remember Dan Haren? What about Lance Lynn and Allen Craig? Carlos Martinez and Alex Reyes? The Memphis Redbirds franchise is like a proud dad sitting atop the bleachers for the Mid-Summer Classic, one year after another. There goes my boy.
Luken Baker is a big (285 pounds) first baseman. And he wields a bat. Last season with the Redbirds, Baker slammed 33 home runs and drove in 98 runs in only 84 games. He was named International League MVP despite playing just over half the Redbirds’ schedule. Baker struggled after a mid-season promotion to St. Louis and found himself back in Memphis to start the 2024 campaign. He has climbed to second place in Redbirds franchise history and if he hits 21 home runs this year, Baker will break Nick Stavinoha’s club record. It’s the kind of cumulative effect that calls me back to those bleachers, season after season.
As we’re measuring achievements, though, let’s not forget the moments that can happen on a baseball diamond, the memories that can be made in but one visit. In his brilliant book/poem, A Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season, Willie Morris summoned the child (and fan) in all of us: “Comfort the smallest of ballplayers, who have never gotten a hit, and those who strike out time and time again or languish on the benches day after livelong day, for their moment, too, is destined to be.”
