Cardinals promote DeWitt III to CEO amid broader MLB uncertainty
The St. Louis Cardinals announced Wednesday a change in organizational leadership that puts a bow on one of the most consequential and prosperous periods in franchise history, coming as Major League Baseball stands on the cusp of what could be one of the most turbulent periods of change the sport has seen in decades.
Bill DeWitt III, the team’s president since 2008, has been named chief executive officer, assuming direct control over both business and baseball operations.
Anuk Karunaratne, who joined the organization in 2024, has been named president of business operations, a role comparable to Chaim Bloom’s responsibilities overseeing baseball operations.
Bill DeWitt Jr., who turns 85 in August and has been chairman of the Cardinals since the ownership group he leads purchased the team from Anheuser-Busch in 1996, will remain chairman and principal owner. The team said he will “continue his involvement in significant team baseball and business matters.”
As principal owner of the Cardinals for the last three decades, DeWitt has overseen two World Series championships (2006, 2011) and two other National League pennants (2004, 2013).
He took the helm of the franchise at a time when it was languishing under brewery ownership — an unwanted asset playing in an out-of-date stadium in front of diminishing home crowds. The final home game in 1995 drew 22,175 fans.
The 1996 season featured a refresh of Busch Stadium II with the installation of natural grass and a marketing slogan premised on “baseball like it oughta be,” reaching back to the team’s established roots as an NL blue-blood franchise.
The ownership group brought in Tony La Russa from Oakland, importing his skills and his deep connections to some of the game’s best coaches.
With an intense focus on tradition and honoring the team’s past — and drafting behind the enormous momentum created by the wave of attention generated by Mark McGwire’s home run record chase — the Cardinals found themselves back among the game’s elite within five years of the DeWitt ownership group’s takeover.
Within 10 years, they were in a new downtown ballpark and claiming the franchise’s first title since 1982.
All the while, DeWitt was becoming one of the game’s most influential owners. He previously chaired MLB’s executive council and has served stints on both the competition and labor committees.
He is a close ally of Commissioner Rob Manfred, and his influence helped sway other owners to elevate Manfred to the job in 2014.
“My time with Bill was formative, educational, and exciting. Bill has the rare combination of intelligence, innovation, and youthful love of the game,” longtime former president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told the News-Democrat. “His passion to win is real, he truly wanted a product on the field fans would be proud of, and he pushed for that. I consider myself lucky to have worked for him and the city of St. Louis was lucky to have him as an owner.”
“I’ve got nothing but great things to say about him,” said Nolan Arenado, who spent five years at third base for the Cardinals before being traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the most recent offseason. “He’s been phenomenal to me when I got here.”
Arenado recounted his first home run for the Cardinals — a game-winning drive against the Milwaukee Brewers in his first home game in St. Louis on April 7, 2021 — and the surprise celebrant who was waiting for him as he came off the field.
“When I came up the tunnel to come to the locker room, he was the first one to greet me,” Arenado recalled. “That meant a lot to me. It was pretty cool. I’d never been a part of something like that, where the owner’s shaking my hand. That was awesome.”
That level of personal involvement by DeWitt — from trade negotiations to spring training back fields to postgame celebrations after a win — was one of the hallmarks of his tenure as chairman.
Despite keeping his permanent home in Cincinnati during his time at the helm of the franchise, DeWitt was a constant presence around the ballpark, and his granular knowledge of the team’s day-to-day operations on and off the field has been a rarity in a sport where teams are too often treated as pure assets.
His father, William O. DeWitt, first worked for the Cardinals in 1916 and, over the decades, grew his involvement and investment in baseball until he assumed ownership of the St. Louis Browns in 1949.
DeWitt was working for the Browns as a bat boy in 1951 when Eddie Gaedel, MLB’s only player with dwarfism, was summoned by general manager Bill Veeck to take a stunt plate appearance as a pinch hitter. Gaedel wore DeWitt’s bat boy uniform to the plate, and it is now on display in the Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Ballpark Village — arguably DeWitt’s crowning real estate achievement.
The transition comes as both the Cardinals and MLB shift the ground under their feet.
After nearly two full decades with Mozeliak at the helm of baseball operations, Bloom is in the midst of his first season in that role and is steering the franchise through a roster rebuild.
Karunaratne joined the franchise in 2024 as senior vice president for business operations, and his growth in that role has reshaped many aspects of the organization’s business under DeWitt III, especially as the team has navigated the loss of its regional sports network and the attendant revenue.
Bloom and Karunaratne shared the dais at Wednesday’s press conference with the DeWitts, presenting a unified front and vision for the immediate and long-term paths forward for the franchise.
This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 1:21 PM.