Sexologists Masters And Johnson Were Cardinals Fans. Duh.

"Particularly for young people," Thomas Maier noted in a recent essay, "unaware of Masters and Johnson, it's difficult to appreciate how much has changed between the mid-'60s and today. But at the time they were becoming famous, the couples' graphs, charts and photos of human sexual response—learning how the body worked so they could 'fix' sexual problems with their therapy—were revolutionary."

Maier, who wrote the book, Masters of Sex, claims that "in a real sense, Masters and Johnson symbolized the triumph of modernity and medicine over religious taboos and cultural ignorance." Sweet.

For our purposes, though, the fact that the St. Louis-based sexologists were Cardinals fans (pictured, at Busch Stadium) is worthy of note. "I love baseball, football, all sports," Masters himself told LIFE magazine in 1966, at the very moment he and Johnson were becoming unlikely household names, "and I follow them as the seasons change."

Play ball! Pun intended.

[MORE: Hanging out with everybody's favorite sexologists]

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Ben Cosgrove is the editor of LIFE.com. Picture This is his occasional feature for The Stacks.

Photo Credit: Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images