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During the past two decades in Major League Baseball, only the Houston Astros have won pennants and appeared in more World Series than the Cardinals and Boston. Two of baseball's most accomplished and celebrated franchises have won four pennants each and faced each other twice in the World Series, both of them won by the BoSox.

The ties that bind go beyond shared Octobers these days as both clubs, perennial contenders for most of baseball's current era, are trying to find their footing and return to their postseason expectations.

Rob Bradford captured the connection in a brand new Best Podcast in Baseball.

"Both franchises are starving to find the certainty," he said.

Bradford, the , joins the next-best baseball podcast to discuss the shared traits of the Cardinals and Red Sox — and the one link that is about to define the Cardinals future. Bradford, the Red Sox reporter at WEEI in Boston, covered Chaim Bloom's tenure atop Boston's baseball operations, and Bradford talks through how the pressures and decisions on Bloom look different in hindsight.

With Best Podcast in Baseball host and baseball writer Derrick Goold, Bradford discusses how Bloom's time at Fenway Park gives a glimpse into how he'll do when he takes over baseball ops at Busch Stadium a year from now.

Bradford, .

Which it isn't.

And this lively conversation about it aims to show why, right down to a tattoo promise Bradford and Kelly made that has now come due.    

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, is a production of the ×îÐÂÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ Post-Dispatch, , and baseball writer Derrick Goold.