One League, Two Seasons
The National League of 1967 and 1968 was a ten-team circuit with no divisions, and the St. Louis Cardinals won the pennant in both years. The two seasons looked quite different. In 1967 the Cardinals won with a balanced lineup led by a first baseman acquired the year before. In 1968 the league as a whole was dominated by pitching to a degree that led to rule changes.
The 1967 Pennant Race That Wasn’t
The Cardinals finished 101-60, well clear of the San Francisco Giants, who came second. The rest of the league never really threatened them. St. Louis had a deep lineup that included centre fielder Curt Flood, who would later challenge baseball’s reserve system in court, and speed on the bases and a rotation led by Bob Gibson, who missed time after a line drive fractured his leg in July. Gibson returned in September, and the Cardinals held their lead without him. They went on to beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, a story told in other articles in this cluster.
Manager Red Schoendienst, in his third season at the helm, steered the club through the summer without much drama. That contrasted with the American League, where four teams were still alive on the last weekend.
Orlando Cepeda’s Unanimous MVP
The Cardinals’ offence centred on Orlando Cepeda, a Puerto Rican first baseman nicknamed “the Baby Bull.” The Giants had traded him to St. Louis in May 1966 for pitcher Ray Sadecki. In 1967 he hit around .325 with 25 home runs and 111 runs batted in, and he received every first-place vote in the National League Most Valuable Player balloting. A unanimous MVP result is rare, and it reflected how clearly he was seen as the Cardinals’ leader.
Cepeda had been a star with the Giants for years, but the trade gave him a team that could contend, and his clubhouse presence was often credited as part of the Cardinals’ unity. The 1967 award was among the highlights of a career that eventually led to the Hall of Fame.
The Giants and Mets
The Giants finished second again in 1968 as well, continuing a run of strong teams that did not quite reach the top. They had Willie Mays and Willie McCovey in the lineup and Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry on the mound, which made them one of the best-looking clubs in the league on paper. In the 1960s, though, it was the Cardinals and Dodgers who tended to win the pennants. The Giants’ lack of a title in this period is a recurring theme in baseball history.
The New York Mets sat at the other end of the table. They lost more than 100 games in 1967 and finished near the bottom of the league, yet they had Tom Seaver, who won the Rookie of the Year award. In 1968 the Mets improved modestly, finishing ninth, and their larger rise would come in 1969. They offer a useful reminder that the National League of these years was home to a wide range of talent.
The Year of the Pitcher
The 1968 season was played against a turbulent national backdrop that included the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the King assassination in April. On the field, the dominant story was pitching. By 1968 the National League, along with the American League, had become strongly pitcher-friendly. Run scoring dropped sharply across both leagues, and the season became known as the Year of the Pitcher. Two performances stand out.
- Bob Gibson. He finished 1968 with a 1.12 earned run average, one of the lowest marks in the modern era. He also won the Cy Young Award and the league MVP award that year. In a season when many pitchers excelled, his numbers stood apart.
- Don Drysdale. The Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander pitched 58 and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings in 1968, a record that stood for two decades. The streak ran across several starts in May and June.
The Cardinals won the 1968 pennant again with a 97-65 record, though they lost the World Series to the Detroit Tigers in seven games. That result is part of the Detroit story in this cluster.
The Effect on the Rules
The drop in offence was serious enough that baseball acted. After the 1968 season the mound was lowered from fifteen inches to ten, and the strike zone was reduced. These steps were intended to give hitters a better chance. Offensive numbers recovered in 1969, when the leagues also expanded and began divisional play.
For the National League, the changes meant a different structure. The league added the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres in 1969 and split into East and West divisions, which ended the straight pennant race that the Cardinals had won in 1967 and 1968.
How the Two Seasons Fit Together
Looking at 1967 and 1968 together, the National League shows a pattern: a strong team built on defence and pitching, an unusually pitching-heavy season, and then a rapid response from the rule-makers. Cepeda’s MVP season was a high point of the first year, and Gibson’s 1.12 ERA was the signature of the second. The final seasons before expansion carry a certain finality. Within a year, the league would look quite different, even if its stars remained the same.