Opening Day, Then and Now: Remembering 2006

The Cardinal Chronicle
Throwback Thursday - Opening Day, Then and Now: Remembering 2006 
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

There are Opening Days… and then there are seasons that remind us why Opening Day matters.

As the St. Louis Cardinals prepare to take the field to begin the 2026 season, it’s worth taking a step back—twenty years—to Opening Day 2006. A new ballpark. A fresh start. And a season that, at the time, no one could have fully understood.

Busch Stadium III opened its gates that spring, replacing a building full of memories with a promise of new ones yet to be written. The Cardinals didn’t ease into the moment—they came out of the gate like a contender, racing to a 31–16 record by late May.

It looked, for a while, exactly like what it was supposed to be.

And then… baseball happened.

 
A Season That Slipped… and Somehow Held Together
The 2006 Cardinals were not built to struggle—but struggle they did.

Injuries began to chip away at the foundation. Mark Mulder was lost for the year. Jim Edmonds battled through pain and missed time. David Eckstein, the heartbeat of the infield, was in and out of the lineup when they needed him most.

Performance didn’t always fill the gap.

Jason Marquis couldn’t find consistency. Sidney Ponson didn’t last. Jason Isringhausen, as reliable as they come, blew ten saves before his season ended with surgery. Even Yadier Molina—who would later define an era—was still finding his footing, hitting just .216 that year.

And then came the losing.

Two separate eight-game losing streaks. Another stretch of seven. June slipped away. August followed. September didn’t offer much relief.

By the time it was over, the Cardinals stood at 83–78.

On paper, it didn’t look like a champion.

 
The Door That Stayed Open
But baseball isn’t played on paper.

In a National League Central that offered little resistance, the Cardinals simply stayed afloat long enough to matter. On the final day of the season, they punched their ticket—beating out the Houston Astros by a game and a half.

It wasn’t dominant.

It wasn’t pretty.

But it was enough.

And sometimes, enough is all you need.

 
When October Rewrites Everything
What followed remains one of the most unlikely runs in baseball history.

The Cardinals weren’t favored against the San Diego Padres. They won.

They weren’t expected to beat the New York Mets. They did that too—in seven games, on one of the most iconic curveballs ever thrown.

And in the World Series?

They didn’t just compete—they took control.

Four games to one over the Detroit Tigers.

A championship.

Their tenth.

And maybe the most improbable of them all.

With a .516 winning percentage, the 2006 Cardinals became the least statistically dominant team ever to win it all.

But that’s the thing about October…

It doesn’t care what you were in June.

 
The Lesson That Carries Forward
There’s a reason that season still gets talked about, twenty years later.

It wasn’t about being the best team from wire to wire.

It was about staying in the fight long enough for things to change.

It was about resilience.

It was about a group of players who never quite had it all together—until the moment it mattered most.

As the Cardinals take the field to open the 2026 season, there will be expectations. There will be questions. There will be moments, good and bad, that try to define this club before the story is finished.

But if 2006 taught us anything, it’s this:

Don’t write the ending in April.

 
One More Look Back Before We Look Ahead
Opening Day is about hope.

But history reminds us—it’s also about patience.

Because somewhere between the first pitch of April and the final out of October, a season finds its identity.

The 2006 Cardinals didn’t look like champions.

Until they were.

Image - Opening Day Poster, Mileur Media Group, 2006

 
The Cardinal Chronicle