Former St. Louis Cardinals’ star Jim Edmonds belongs in baseball’s Hall of Fame

Best wishes to former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder and current broadcaster Jim Edmonds who announced over the weekend that he was being tested for coronavirus.

Edmonds later posted he was starting to feel better, so let’s talk not about his health but the fact that he’s one of the five best St. Louis Cardinals players of the last 30 years on a team that has included Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Chris Carpenter, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright and Mark McGwire. In short, with Ted Simmons finally getting his due, Edmonds deserves to be the next Cardinal to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Because he shared a lineup with Pujols, Rolen and McGwire — not to mention a position with hall of fame center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. — Edmonds may have been short changed. There are few players in the history of the game that offered the defensive wizardry Edmonds showed regularly in center and the powerful bat in the middle of the order at the same time. The players who did — Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, Joe DiMaggio and Griffey — are all in the Hall of Fame. Despite the fact that Edmonds hasn’t gotten much love on the Hall of Fame ballot, he belongs in Cooperstown.

Just because he played at the same time as Griffey is no reason Edmonds shouldn’t be considered for enshrinement. The man was a human highlight reel with his glove and it’s hard to find a center fielder who could anchor the middle of the lineup like he did. While Pujols was a once in a generation player in his prime, Edmonds would have been the star of just about any other team he played for.

There wasn’t a team in baseball that wouldn’t have been better with Edmonds on the roster. In fact, if he and Griffey played in the same outfield, I think Edmonds might have been better appreciated by the Hall of Fame voters. Instead of being seen as a rival of Junior, causing the voters to choose one over the other, he would have been seen as a partner. If I was the manager of a team that both players were on, I would have played Edmonds in center field because I think he was the better fielder.

Jim Edmonds highlights

Anyway, Edmonds was a pure winner. He seemed to always come through when the game was on the line. Here are three of my favorite highlights from his career. But, honestly, you could put together an hour-long highlight reel of all his great plays.

Edmonds breaks a 12th inning tie in the 2004 National League Championship Series. Before there was David Freese, the player whom Edmonds was traded for when he Cardinals career came to an end, there was the sixth game of the 2004 NLCS that Edmonds won with a titanic extra inning blast.

The home run Edmonds hit in Game 6 was the stage setter for the game-changing catch he made in the left-center field gap in Game 7. Laid out to reach the ball, Edmonds kept the game from being broken open, putting St. Louis in position for a comeback that would send the team to the World Series for the first time since 1987.

Back in the days when the Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds were bitter rivals, Edmonds was always the thorn in their side. Here he robs future teammate Jason LaRue of a home run.

While it might be a stretch to compare Edmonds to Mantle and Mays, his numbers are comparable to those of Duke Snider who received his due in the Hall of Fame with a handful more home runs than Edmonds and a similar batting average. Who knows what goes through the minds of voters. But anyone who watched him play — or who has listened to him explain the game during one of his broadcasts — realizes that Edmonds was very a very special player who operated at another level than the average major league player.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.