The Cardinals Are All Birds of a Feather

I have been watching the St. Louis Cardinals for three or so nights now and I’m beginning to get this uneasy feeling.

Are they all the same guy?

Look at them. They’re all 5-10 or 5-11. They all bat from both sides of the plate. They all run the hundred in 9.2 or the forty in 4.3. They all think a home run is something that rolls to the outfield fence. They steal bases by the carload.

I can’t tell one from the other and I don’t think the National League pitchers can, either. I fully expect a pitcher to come down from the mound some night, point to a batter and protest, “But I just got this guy out! On a slider on the outside corner! I’d know that swing anywhere!”

They weren’t recruited, they were cloned. There’s a big story here. My guess is they all have the same fingerprints and handwriting. They’re interchangeable.

You get dizzy watching them. They’re like Custer’s Indians. They seem to multiply before your eyes. It’s an illusion. Like the clowns coming out of a car in the circus or the old days in Hollywood when they used to make Westerns by having the same two riders come by the cameras and then double back and come by again creating the impression of a huge posse but keeping the budget down. My guess is the Cardinals have a three-man roster. They just switch uniforms when no one is looking.

Look at it this way. Did anyone ever see Vince Coleman and Ozzie Smith together after a game? Did anybody ever check the Cardinals’ rooming list? If you yelled, “Hey, Ozzie!” would six guys turn around?

What’s the real difference between Willie McGee and, say, Terry Pendleton? Is there really a Terry Pendleton? Or do these guys split like an amoeba at game time?

They’ve got a guy who answers to the name of Curt Ford, but they’re not fooling me. I knew him when he was Curt Flood. That’s another thing. These guys don’t get a day older. Trust me. They’re going to be playing together in the year 2000. Maybe 3000.

They give me the creeps. I’d like to find out where they hide the test tube. What a plot for a movie! What a hoax on the league! I can just see one sitting there and saying, “I think I’ll be Tommy Herr tonight. No, on second thought, maybe I’ll be Terry Pendleton instead.”

They make you sick the way they win games. The other night, they scored the two winning runs on the Dodgers on no hits.

They play an odd kind of baseball. They’ve almost made the bat obsolete. I swear it’s just a prop. These guys don’t need bats, just shoes.

Nobody takes a full turn on the ball. They just kind of tap it out there and start to run like hell.

You want to lean over and say, “Hey, guys! It’s 1987! The home run is in . Enough already with that Punch and Judy baseball. John McGraw is dead.”

I don’t think these guys ever heard of Babe Ruth. The leagues have hit 10 million or so home runs this year, and these guys are puttering along with about 50. As a matter of fact, take away the home runs Jack Clark has hit and they’re struggling to hit 25. What Jack Clark is doing in there is anybody’s guess. Jack is the black sheep of this family. He just doesn’t seem to understand you don’t need to expend all that strength and energy and grunt when you swing. But they’re patient with him. They believe he’ll come around in time.

It’s not a baseball game the way the rest of them play it, it’s a track meet. I mean, if I want to see guys run, I’ll go to the Olympics.

Can you believe these guys hit only 58 home runs last year? You know how many guys have hit that many--or more--themselves in one season? Four. Roger Maris, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg and Babe Ruth, who did it twice.

Eleven major league teams have hit more than 100 home runs already this season and three others have hit more than 90. But without Clark, the Cardinals would barely have two dozen. They get runs invisibly.

Of course, they have baseball reduced to a formula that does away with the home run. It goes something like this:

--A single equals a triple.

--A walk equals a double.

--A double equals a run.

They don’t need the home run. They win a pennant like every other year with this lineup of Ozzie McGee--or is it Willie Coleman?--and Tommy Pendleton and Terry Herr and good old Vince Smith at shortstop. The old-time Cardinals were famous as the Gashouse Gang. This version should be famous as the One-Man Gang.