Amateur teams played baseball in St. Louis in the 1850's.  The first use of nationally-accepted baseball rules occurred locally in 1860.  Most competition through 1866 was between local amateur clubs, with the Unions and the Empires being the early powers. The first contest with a visiting eastern team was between the St. Louis Unions and the Nationals of Washington, D.C., in 1867.  The Nationals won by the discouraging score of 113-26.

The first professional baseball team in the country was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings which played a touring schedule and went undefeated.  The first professional league was formed in 1871, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players.  St. Louis did not have a team in this league initially and still had only amateur teams through 1874, with the St. Louis Red Stockings claiming the 1874 local amateur championship over the Empires.

John R. Lucas formed a group of local businessmen to establish St. Louis' first professional team with a franchise in the National Association in 1875.  The club, known as the Brown Stockings, hired professional players from the east to stock the team and included some local talent.  The Red Stockings and the Empires also hired one professional player each, but did not pay any other team members.  The Red Stockings team also entered the National Association.

The first professional league game in St. Louis was played on May 4th, 1875, with the Brown Stockings visiting the Red Stockings at their home field on Compton Avenue.  The all-professional Brown Stockings won the game more easily than the 15-9 score would indicate.  The Red Stockings scored 8 runs in the eighth inning, perhaps with a little leniency from the Brown Stockings' fielders.

The Red Stockings were unable to beat any of the good teams in the National Association, and in July the other teams refused to play them.  The Red Stockings dropped out of the league but continued to play in St. Louis as a semi-pro/amateur team for many years.

The Brown Stockings, playing home games at the Grand Avenue field that later became the site of Sportsman's Park, did quite well against the other national professional teams.  On June 5th they beat the previously unbeaten Boston Red Stockings, 5-4, snapping Boston's 26-game winning streak.  The Brown Stockings finished the season in fourth place with a 39-29 record but were 26 and 1/2 games behind champion Boston.

The first major league was the National League which began in 1876 with eight teams.  The Brown Stockings team, owned by John R. Lucas and associates, was a charter member.  On July 15th St. Louis' only pitcher, George Washington Bradley, threw the National League's first no-hitter, defeating Hartford 2-0.  The team finished in second place with a 45-19 record.  The National League dropped to six teams in 1877 and the team finished in fourth place with a 28-32 record.  Before the 1878 season, St. Louis' ownership signed five excellent players from the Louisville team and one from Chicago.  This major effort to improve the team came crashing down because four of the Louisville players were accused of throwing games in 1877 and were banished from baseball for life.  Amid allegations that the St. Louis owners knew of the accusations of thrown games before the players were signed, Lucas and his associates resigned from the National League.

In 1884 the Union Association, with major league status, was formed by St. Louis' own Henry V. Lucas, a nephew of John R. Lucas.  Twelve teams played in the league during the season but only five played in more than 100 games.  Henry Lucas also owned the St. Louis Maroons, who won the city's first major league championship with a remarkable 94-19 record.  In December only four teams attended the league meeting to plan for the next season and the league disbanded.

This was not the end of the Maroons, but perhaps it should have been. The team obtained a franchise in the National League in 1885 and finished dead last, 49 games out of first place at 36-72.  In 1886 the team improved to sixth place at 43-79 but was still 46 games out of first.  Owner Lucas announced in August that he had lost $23,000 during the last three years.  In March of 1887 the St. Louis franchise was sold and transferred to Indianapolis.

In 1882 a new major league was formed, the American Association.  The owner of a tavern near the Grand Avenue field, where baseball had been played for at least 16 years, realized that crowds attending ball games were good for his business.  The tavern owner, Chris Von der Ahe, with assistance from Al Spink, the founder of The Sporting News, obtained a franchise in the new league for his team, the Brown Stockings (or Browns) which began playing as an amateur team in 1880.  Von der Ahe was the president and issued stock in the "Sportsman's Park and Club" after he bought the ball field and named it "Sportsman's Park."

The team had great success, winning the American Association championship four years in a row, 1885-1888.  The 1885 "World Championship" series, played against the National League champion Chicago White Stockings, ended in an unsatisfactory tie, 3-3-1.  In 1886 the first outright world championship for St. Louis was won by the Browns over the same Chicago team.  This was the only time the American Association champion beat the National League champ in 10 years of co-existence.  In 1887 and 1888 the Browns were defeated rather easily by their National League opponents.

In 1892 the American Association merged with the National League, with the older National League gaining four new teams and the American Association disappearing.  Von der Ahe is given great credit for arranging this merger and his team gained a franchise in the National League.  He also moved the team to another ball park which was called either League Park or New Sportsman's Park.  Von der Ahe experienced difficult times, which included poor teams, ball park fires, and law suits, and was forced to sell the team in early 1899.

The new owners were Stanley and Frank Robison, brothers who already owned the Cleveland Spiders in the National League. They decided to have the best team they could and moved their better players from Cleveland to St. Louis, and the lesser players from St. Louis to Cleveland.  They renamed the ball park Robison Field and also provided new uniforms for the St. Louis team which featured red trim and red stockings.  They attempted to call the team the Perfectos, but this name proved unpopular and sportswriter Willie McHale of the St. Louis Republic kept calling the team "Cardinals" after overhearing a woman say that the red on the uniforms was "a lovely shade of cardinal."

The Cardinals continued to play in Robison Field until 1920 when they moved back to Sportsman's Park as tenants to the current (in 1920) owners, the St. Louis Browns of the American League.  The Cardinals and Browns shared the park from 1920 through the 1953 season.  The schedule makers of the American and National Leagues had to coordinate schedules so that one team would be at home while the other was on the road for all those years.

In 1953 owner Fred Saigh sold the Cardinals and Sportsman's Park to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, despite being offered substantially more by interests in Houston and Milwaukee who intended to move the team.  Saigh wanted the team to stay in St. Louis and he probably never got the credit he deserved for the Cardinals remaining a St. Louis fixture.  Sportsman's Park was renamed Busch Stadium after an attempt to rename it Budweiser Field or Park was denied by Major League Baseball.  The Cardinals continued to play there through the 1965 season and, after eleven home games in 1966, moved to their new home downtown, Busch Memorial Stadium.