Some interesting reading (if not too fuzzy)
 

1892

Good stuff. Thank you for posting. Joe

Believe it or not I found this article while searching during Ancestry free newspaper search. I found it very interesting. Also found (and posted on the football section) a 1910 article re Walter Camp and his ideas on football reform.

True beginnings of St. Louis franchise
 

Thanks for posting. Similar to the merger of the AFL and NFL, National League merged with American Association 's 4 remaining teams. The merged league initially included both names in it's new name and adopted many of the Associations' differences such as Sunday baseball, beer sales and 25 cent admission. Over time, this merger has been treated as a take over by NL probably because only American Association team that survived the decade was St. Louis. I never have understood why the Cardinals officially list its beginning in 1892 when the merger occurred and not it's True beginning with the American Association 11 years earlier

Interesting point - other teams, like my Cubs, trace back to their beginnings even though the name is not the same (1876 White Stockings - Cubs didn't come in until 1903). Have you asked them the question? Wikipedia traces the Cardinals back to 1881 - wonder why the Cardinals don't?

Thank you for posting this!

My guess is the Cardinals wanted to differentiate their team from the new American League team that moved to St. Louis from Milwaukee in 1901 and called themselves the Browns which, of course, was the Cardinals name when they were in the American Association and until 1900 when they were renamed the Cardinals. To this day we still refer to the American League as the junior circuit.

That is probably true. My kids don't believe me when I tell them the Milwaukee Brewers actually go back to 1901. Of course they also don't believe me when i tell them the Milwaukee Brewers were a Cubs farm team at one time.