Cardinals Don’t Succeed at First

In this condemned ballpark, where Hank Aaron overtook Babe Ruth in a place where Yankees are seldom welcome, a number of St. Louis Cardinals stood helplessly or sat numbly Thursday night, while Atlanta Braves ran around and around.

There was 41-year-old shortstop Ozzie Smith, warming a bench. There were pitchers Dennis Eckersley and Rick Honeycutt, each 42, confined to a bullpen. This baseball carnage they were witnessing was rare enough, even for them, so imagine what it was like for Mark Sweeney, a green teammate of 26, watching Brave after Brave after Brave crossing home plate.

“Pinch me,” Cardinal catcher Danny Sheaffer turned and said to Sweeney in the very first inning, “because I don’t believe I’m seeing this.”

From inside the visiting team’s dugout, the sight of 15 enemy runs being scored in the home of the Braves was almost unbearable. The only thing worse was watching Cardinal teammates, flat on their faces in the field, diving for baseballs, or fetching them like puppies after Frisbees, while a friend on the pitching mound stood there unable to do anything but suffer.

Donovan Osborne was that pitcher, for the first nine batters. The ninth one, Tom Glavine, laced a bases-loaded triple to the left-field corner, coming as close as humanly possible to an all-time baseball Believe It Or Not, an inside-the-park grand slam. (By a pitcher yet.) Osborne came out of the game, already a loser in a contest 24 minutes old.

The World Series, gone.

The Cardinals, dead team walking.

“What happened?” Osborne was asked, all too bluntly.

“I don’t know what happened,” the shaken young pitcher replied. “It happened too fast.”

And so it had. A chance of a lifetime had disappeared in a heartbeat, Atlanta was going off to play the damn Yankees, hibernation or retirement awaited the Cardinals, and, worst of all, worse than anything imaginable to any St. Louis player, manager, batboy or fan, there were still eight innings to go.

Everywhere they looked, there were Braves on the basepath, fans on the warpath, going for more, more, more.

“They jumped on us,” St. Louis outfielder Brian Jordan said, “and they wouldn’t stop.”

“Hey, hats off,” Eckersley added. “The Braves, they’re bleepin’ awesome.”

Had anybody suggested to the Cardinals that they were about to be outscored, 32-1, over a three-game span in this series for the National League pennant, the Cards would have suggested to the suggestee that he be locked up in a bleepin’ rubber room. For who could have foreseen that Donovan Osborne would fail to last one full inning, or that St. Louis couldn’t get one extra-base hit over three entire games?

Upon getting the hook, Osborne descended into the private hell of the dugout, where he was met by his namesake, Osborne Earl Smith. The imminent retiree told the youthful pitcher with the bright baseball future not to let it eat at him. “Don’t worry about it. It happens,” said Ozzie to Osborne, even though in 19 seasons, the shortstop sure hadn’t seen anything like this happen too often.

“He’s been like a dad to me,” the pitcher said.

Across the locker room, Smith was trying to make a quick and quiet exit. On this night when a Cardinal uniform with the numeral “1” was being worn for the final time, Smith spent mere seconds on the field, pinch-hitting in the sixth inning with the score already 10-0, stepping into the batter’s box as Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine graciously tipped his cap to Ozzie, then flying out on the first pitch to Jermaine Dye in foul territory.

Returning to the dugout to the same ovation he received upon advancing to home plate, Smith tipped his helmet to the fans, one last time. But he was in no mood for memory lane.

“Anyone with one competitive bone in his body wouldn’t want it to end this way,” Smith said. “Not 15 to nothing.”

All around him, teammates were picking up the pieces.

Tom Pagnozzi was saying he had mixed feelings about the World Series, loyal to the National League but mindful of how much a championship would mean to Joe Torre, his old manager. Ronnie Gant actually used the phrase, “Go Braves,” in support of his former teammates, saying he would support them now. Willie McGee, 38 next month, said self-mockingly, “Toward the end the Cardinals wanted me in their lineup, but toward the middle they probably wanted me as a coach.”

In this series between the city of Scarlett O’Hara and the city of Red Schoendienst, the final outcome wasn’t supposed to be settled until the final out. Nothing but rubble will remain of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium next time the Braves and Cardinals meet, but from the new park, across the street, the Cards will still remember 15 Braves, running around and around.