They overachieved this year and were lucky the Cubs collapsed. I am sure they will be competitive the next couple years but they are not a dynasty in the making. I can’t remember the Cards having a prolonged stretch of bad years. They are very lucky as fans that their team is almost always good. A bad stretch such as the Reds are going through would be nice and they could test their fandom.
I was there in 1999, and they had great fans. Of course this was when (Big Mac) McGwire was hitting home runs like crazy! Thats when they started "Big Mac land" in the old Busch stadium. If a player hit a homer into the Big Mac land section then all fans would get free Big Macs. I think it happened 2 or 3 times that year. But... they have had good/great teams over the years, and the fans show up. This is an easy concept to grasp, but Peter Angelos just doesn't understand