It always struck me that Bidwill merely used Columbus to try to get a better deal someplace else. But Rinehart, now an attorney in private practice here, says it isn't true. He said Columbus might have been the first city to contact him.

"I forget how I heard he was unhappy in St. Louis, maybe from John Galbreath," said Rinehart, referring to the Columbus businessman who died in 1988. "So I picked up the phone and called (Bidwill) and made an appointment. At the time, there was no indication publicly that they were going to leave St. Louis.

"On the phone, his secretary asked, 'Why do you want to come here?' I think I told her that we have an Anheuser-Busch plant here, and I go to see August Busch occasionally and I'd like to call on Mr. Bidwill while I'm there. When I got in there, Bidwill asked how I knew he was thinking of moving. I told him, 'Look, if you're in the hunt, we're in the hunt. You're going to find Columbus a great, great place to consider.' And he said, 'You're on the list.' He never blew me off. He was so gracious."

The meeting stood in stark contrast with one Rinehart had with Major League Baseball officials in an attempt to secure an expansion team for Columbus in 1985.

"I was in a room in New York with (Baseball commissioner) Peter Ueberroth, and ( Cincinnati Reds owner) Marge Schott was sitting with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, petting her dog and saying 'Over my dead body will Columbus ever have a team.' Here I was, a 36-year-old mayor from Columbus. It's hard to overcome that."

It would have been hard for Columbus to overcome Bidwill's no-alcohol stipulation, too, but Rinehart was sure willing to give it a try.

"I said. 'Well, we don't have any alcohol in the Buckeyes' stadium, at least not legally, so we don't have to retrain our customers," Rinehart said. "You go to Cleveland or Cincinnati and try to do that, you'd have to retrain the whole community."

Bidwill and his staff came to Columbus and held further discussions with Rinehart and others. He made it clear that he didn't want to be in the stadium business, that he would own the football team and that either the community or private investors would own the stadium. The team would play in Ohio Stadium initially, but would move to the new stadium when it was ready.

"My concern was with business leaders who would have openly paid for the stadium," Rinehart said. "I said 'You guys have to all sign off on that. I have to be able to tell him that there won't be alcohol in there.' That was a big discussion point with the business leaders. Their job was to try to figure out how this thing could make money and not have beer. They still hadn't signed off on it when Bidwill called me and said they were going to go to Phoenix. ... He said 'Phoenix has five states we can roam in.' "

The Cardinals moved into Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium, where no alcohol was allowed. But eventually, alcohol sales were permitted in sky boxes, presumably a bow to the financial realities of professional sports. Phoenix promised Bidwill a stadium, but a savings and loan crisis and a couple of failed ballot initiatives interceded.

As the years passed, there was talk of a team that often drew 30,000 fans in a 75,000-seat college stadium moving again. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1995, there was even talk that the Cardinals might move there. The new stadium that Bidwill wanted from Columbus in 1987 finally opened in Glendale, Ariz., in 2006. University of Phoenix Stadium permits alcohol sales, of course.

Would the Cardinals have flourished or floundered here? There's no way to know. In the end, the Ohio State football behemoth might have been harder on the Columbus Cardinals than Schott was to the city's Baseball aspirations.

"I asked (Bidwill) if Ohio State had anything to do with his decision," Rinehart said. "And he said, 'No, Columbus was right at the top of those in the running.' He said the community would have handled that easily. He really liked it here."

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com