Recently I was perusing through SABR’s website, and I downloaded some newsletters from the Pictorial History Committee. And while browsing I found the following three photographs that depict the Cardinals in the time period of 1903-1906.
Three things about these photos are incredibly exciting to me.
1. I’ve never seen these photos before, and they show incredible detail.
2. These photos present some of the clearest shots of the monogrammed STL caps for these seasons.
3. There is a player wearing a WHITE CAP, and not a red cap.
The white cap is most exciting to me because it has a slightly different STL on it, and is not something we had in our research. What we thought was the team only wore red caps throughout these years, because that is what the photography we possessed told us.
So of course, I turn to Okkonen to find out if he has this in his research. And he does!
Unfortunately the Dressed To The Nines site does not have any credits, citations, or sources listed. So I tried reaching out to the Hall of Fame’s curator who manages this database, but did not hear back.
So we went digging for more photos and newspaper articles. And luckily I was able to find some more photos of this era on SABR’s website, and found some decent photographs and one description in newspaper accounts.
Based on the two 1903 images we found, we think the Cardinals might have worn the lighter colored cap in all 4 of these seasons, 03, 04, 05, and 06. But, we do not know if the cap was white or gray, and used for home or road, or both.
The final newspaper article from the Globe Democrat in early 1906 seems to say the Cardinals started wearing white caps that season, so perhaps the lighter colored cap depicted anytime before was a road cap? We have no certainty of that claim.
I tried reaching out to a few SABR committees to see if they could provide more photography, or preferably if they could provide the archives where these photos came from, we might be able to find more photographs that depict the light colored cap.
But for now, and until we have more information, I have made changes to the 1903-1906 page with the following mockups.
And of course, if you have more information and photographs, please feel free to reach out! We’d love to see what you have. cardinals.uniforms.logos@gmail.com
Cardinals Uniforms & Logos 