{"id":95036,"date":"2025-02-04T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=95036"},"modified":"2025-02-04T15:09:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T20:09:06","slug":"cardinals-legend-jim-edmonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/04\/cardinals-legend-jim-edmonds\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals Legend Has Public Falling Out with Organization"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. Louis Cardinals all-time great outfielder Jim Edmonds aired his grievances with the organization in a radio interview on Monday. Edmonds played<\/a> eight seasons with the Cardinals and won a World Series in 2006. He spent the last 12 seasons in the broadcast booth for the television coverage of the Cardinals. That role is coming to an end as well, he will not be returning to the booth for the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Jim Edmonds Parts Ways with the Broadcast<\/h2>\n

Edmonds had been broadcasting with Fox Sports Midwest, then Bally Sports Midwest doing studio coverage and color commentary since 2013. The new broadcast carrier, FanDuel Sports Network, confirmed media reports that Edmonds would not be returning in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Edmonds will not be returning to our St. Louis Cardinals telecasts this season. We want to thank Jim for his many contributions to our Cardinals coverage over the last 10 seasons and wish him the best,” the network wrote in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

In a radio interview with ESPN 101<\/a> in St. Louis, Edmonds said he was not planning to return to the booth anyway. Saying the parting of ways was mutual.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty much perfect,” Edmonds said about the call with the network about ending the relationship. “It made me really happy about my decision. I probably hung on maybe a year or two too long.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Edmonds criticized several aspects of the broadcast ranging from a lack of communication from bosses and technological issues in his radio interview on Monday. His most significant complaint, however, was with the speed of the modern game and how the sport is broadcast now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s total chaos,\u201d Edmonds said. \u201cThe game is so fast right now you don\u2019t even have time to talk. They don\u2019t need two people in the booth. It\u2019s just commercial after commercial after commercial. It\u2019s not the same anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Criticism of the Organization<\/h3>\n

Edmonds<\/a> is a member of the Cardinals Hall of Fame. He played eight seasons with the Cardinals. In that time, he won six Gold Glove Awards, made the All-Star Team three times, was in the top 5 of MVP voting two times, and won the N.L. Pennant<\/a> twice — once in 2004<\/a> and again in 2006.<\/p>\n

In a nearly hour-long radio interview, Edmonds opined how things were different when he played for the team than they are now. He said players used to be encouraged to return and give advice after they had retired. A practice he says now feels discouraged.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not the same organization, it\u2019s not fun to be around, they make it pretty obvious,” Edmonds said. <\/span>\u201cThey just don\u2019t invite us down there anymore. It\u2019s a totally different atmosphere. And it kind of makes you feel like you\u2019re not appreciated, not wanted, don\u2019t need your help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Edmonds said other former players feel the same way. He referenced a time when one current player asked the team to bring Mark McGwire to Spring Training two years ago, and the organization told the player no.<\/p>\n

“They don\u2019t make you feel like you\u2019re wanted to be around the stadium,” Edmonds said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Murky Future with the Cardinals<\/h3>\n

Edmonds said in his interview he still had respect for the team’s ownership and current management including manager Oliver Marmol and president of baseball operations John Mozeliak. However, he is unsure if he will return for events like Opening Day or the Cardinals Hall of Fame Ceremony.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m done,” Edmonds said. “I don\u2019t want to be one of those guys that just hangs around the stadium and signs autographs for the rest of my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked if one of the former players had brought up the feeling of alienation from the organization, Edmonds said he himself had done so to both ownership and management.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done it. Nobody cares,” Edmonds said. <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m not down on the organization; it\u2019s just not the organization that I played for with the people and the history in your face every day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite that, Edmonds maintained that he wasn’t bitter about the situation.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m happy, I\u2019m thankful. I just woke up one day and decided it was time to move on,” Edmonds said.<\/span><\/p>\n

FanDuel Sports Network has not announced the entire broadcast team for the 2025 season. So far, the Cardinals organization has not addressed Edmonds interview.<\/p>\n

Main Photo Credits: Brett Davis-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. Louis Cardinals all-time great outfielder Jim Edmonds aired his grievances with the organization in a radio interview on Monday. Edmonds played eight seasons with the Cardinals and won a World Series in 2006. He spent the last 12 seasons in the broadcast booth for the television coverage of the Cardinals. That role is coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5111,"featured_media":95040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1071],"tags":[792,2426,3850,418,6420,168],"class_list":["post-95036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardinals","category-mlb","tag-baseball-hall-of-fame","tag-broadcasting","tag-jim-edmonds","tag-mark-mcgwire","tag-oliver-marmol","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95036"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95071,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95036\/revisions\/95071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}