Grieving Cardinals lose to Brewers, 7-1

A day after the death of relief pitcher Josh Hancock, the St. Louis Cardinals tried to move on. They had a game to play.

But for Scott Spiezio, it was too much to handle. He was overcome with emotion just before the first pitch when he saw Hancock’s jersey and the black No. 32 patch the team would be wearing Monday night, and Manager Tony La Russa pulled him from the starting lineup.

“I got a little caught up right before game time,” Spiezio said. “Seeing the patch, seeing the jersey. It’s hard to escape, you know? Usually, you’ve got stuff going on and when you get to the park, you can escape it. Here, you can’t.”

With Hancock’s jersey hanging in the bullpen and the dugout, and Milwaukee fans observing a moment of silence, the Cardinals went back to work, trying to focus on the task at hand.

They lost to the Brewers, 7-1, struggling at the plate and in the field.

Kip Wells (1-5) balked in a run and gave up seven runs in six innings. Adam Kennedy was thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double in the fourth, and shortstop David Eckstein was left holding the ball with nowhere to throw it as a second run crossed the plate after a triple by Milwaukee’s Kevin Mench in the sixth.

La Russa wasn’t willing to use the loss of a teammate as an excuse. “I think the whole first month, we’ve been a little fuzzy,” La Russa said. “We just need to sharpen our focus.”

Hancock, 29, was killed shortly after midnight Sunday when his vehicle struck the rear of a flatbed tow truck on a St. Louis highway. The Cardinals’ scheduled home game against Chicago on Sunday night was postponed. “Josh was a great player, a great teammate, a great guy in the clubhouse,” Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter said.