The CITY-Sporting playoff series expands many sporting ties between St. Louis and Kansas City

ST. LOUIS – Missouri’s two largest metropolises, St. Louis and Kansas City, will meet in a professional sports playoff for the first time since 1985.

St. Louis CITY SC begins a three-game playoff series against Sporting Kansas City on Sunday.

For St. Louis, it’s not only a highly anticipated playoff run in its first MLS season, but also another chapter in the rich history between STL and Kansas City Sports.

As the game begins, these are other interesting sports affiliations of the titans of athletics in western and eastern Missouri:

Cardinals Royals

Since the late 1990s, Major League Baseball has played a game against the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals every year as part of interleague play. The Cardinals have largely dominated the regular season series Record of 78-53, good for a winning percentage of .595.

However, Kansas City can boast of the 1985 World Series title, even if it came after a controversial decision by umpire Don Denkinger. The Royals prevailed, winning a seven-game series against the Cardinals. St. Louis leads the total number of World Series titles at 11-2, but Kansas City won the only head-to-head matchup with its Missouri counterpart and the more recent championship between the two franchises in 2015.

According to Baseball Reference104 baseball players (mostly retired) have split time between the Cardinals and Royals during their MLB tenure. The most talented players on both teams include Carlos Beltran, Dan Quisenberry, Darryl Porter and Jeff Suppan.

Chiefs vs. St. Louis NFL teams

St. Louis has been home to four NFL franchises for nearly a century, including two teams in the Super Bowl era. Kansas City has been home to the Chiefs, their only NFL franchise, since 1963.

Over nearly six decades, the Chiefs have played several games against NFL teams while still based in St. Louis, but have since moved: these are today’s ones Arizona Cardinals And Los Angeles Rams.

The Chiefs, who played head-to-head against the Cardinals and Rams in St. Louis, dominated their in-state competition. Kansas City lost just one of 11 head-to-head meetings between the two teams during their time in St. Louis, with a perfect 6-0 record against the Rams during their run in the Gateway City.

Hockey draw

For a brief period between 1974 and 1976, Kansas City was once home to an NHL expansion team called the Scouts. After various developments, their story is now being continued by the New Jersey Devils. The then Kansas City Scouts and the long-time St. Louis Blues built two seasons of the story togetherwith the Blues winning eight out of ten decisions and also achieving two draws.

Although Kansas City doesn’t have an NHL team, the region as a whole seems to have some respect for the Blues. Accordingly Google Analytics, the Kansas City Metro had the best search volume for “St. Louis Blues was in the top 100 outside of St. Louis last year, ranking 11th among all U.S. metros, with many Missouri counterparts not far away.

Every now and then, during the Chiefs’ offseason or between games, you might see their stars, like Patrick Mahomes and Travis KelceThey make a surprise appearance at Blues games. The Blues typically try to host one preseason contest per year in the Kansas City metro as well.

Mizzou Athletics

A common ground in various STL-KC sports rivalries is Mizzou sports. The University of Missouri – Columbia is located almost halfway between both cities, and many of its athletic programs send their top talent to St. Louis and Kansas City.

This year’s Mizzou football team, which enjoys a 7-1 record and 14th place in the AP polls, fields dozens of players in its state’s two largest regions. There are 22 players on this year’s team from the St. Louis metro, led by Luther Burden III, as opposed to 12 from Kansas City. Mizzou has two active quarterbacks at the NFL level, one from the St. Louis Metro in Blaine Gabbert and another from the Kansas City Metro in Drew Lock.

The Mizzou basketball teamwhich also has high hopes in its second year under Dennis Gates, has historically been a hotbed of talent from the St. Louis area, although there are currently more players from the Kansas City area on the roster.

grill

Perhaps the most unlikely of “sports” connections, but St. Louis and Kansas City are both known for their culinary scenes and compete for national awards in barbecue. A popular study that named St. Louis the best barbecue in the country gave St. Louis top honors last year but rewarded Kansas City with top honors this year.

Chefs from Kansas City and St. Louis compete in many high-profile barbecue events, including the American Royal World Series of Barbecue in Kansas City, the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest and the Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational in Tennessee.

The barbecue clubs for Kansas City And St Louis outline many awards from global invitational, state, regional and local events in recent years.

As for CITY vs. Sporting KC

St. Louis CITY SC won the regular season series two games to one against Sporting Kansas City, although the home team won all three games. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues with at least one home game for each and possibly two for CITY by early November.

Another small detail worth noting: This isn’t quite a Missouri-only series, as Sporting KC is based just across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas. However, the two teams have connections to Interstate 70, just like the Cardinals and Royals.

The series plan currently consists of the following:

• Game 1: Sunday, October 29 (CITYPARK – St. Louis) – 9 p.m
• Game 2: Sunday, November 5 (Children’s Mercy Park – Kansas City) – 4 p.m
• Game 3: (If necessary) Saturday, November 11th (CITYPARK – St. Louis) – 6 p.m

Fans can watch the first game on FS1 or Apple TV, while the radio broadcast is available on 98.1 FM>