Fred Saigh was a prominent businessman and tax lawyer in St. Louis. He had a variety of business ventures in the city and had built up a nice portfolio of commercial property by the 1940s (per History of Cardinals). At that time, the Cardinals were owned by Sam Breadon, and the National League ball team did not have a stadium of its own back then. In those days, the team paid a fee to play their home games in the stadium that was occupied by another MLB team, the Saint Louis Browns. Breadon had wanted to build his ballpark for his Cardinals and had a nice sum set aside for it. The $5 million in funds could easily cover the costs, but Breadon had two obstacles. One, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was in ill health. Second, he had yet to find a usable location to build the proposed new stadium. If he didn’t break ground soon, he was going to have to pay income taxes on the money he had saved to pay for construction.
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Saigh persuaded Breadon to sell the team to him. He brought in an investor, St. Louis businessman Robert Hannegan. Not long after their $4 million deal to buy the team was inked, Hannegan’s failing health pushed him to sell his shares to Saigh. With Saigh in control of the club, he built a solid rapport with other team owners. He was responsible for getting other teams interested in revenue sharing from broadcasts, as well as getting the current baseball commissioner replaced. But trouble would soon follow.
