i've been asked to write a guest column for Ball Hype's "alternate history" series. you take one event from the last 25 years of your favorite team's history, change the outcome, and then speculate about how all the subsequent years would have unfolded differently. the general idea is to pick a loss and flip it to a victory, then describe the subsequent years of happily-ever-after.
i've already got a good idea about where i'd like to go with this article, but thought it might be a fun question to throw out to the community for discussion. if you could alter one cardinals-related event --- a single play, the outcome of a game, a trade, whatever --- what would it be? and how would subsequent events have unfolded more favorably?