(Updated April 13, 2025)
Nolan Ryan and Danny Frisella, two pitchers Joe Torre hit well in his career, combined to stop the Cardinals third baseman’s April hitting streak.
Torre hit safely in each of the Cardinals’ first 22 games of the 1971 season.
Torre’s streak gave him a .386 batting average entering a game against the Mets on April 29, 1971, in St. Louis.
Batting fourth, Torre went 0-for-3 with a walk against Ryan and Frisella. “In a way, I’m relieved,” Torre told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Ryan and Frisella, both right-handers, were unlikely candidates to end Torre’s streak. For his career, Torre hit .318 (7-for-22) against Ryan and .500 (7-for-14) against Frisella.
Facing Ryan in the first inning with two runners on base and one out, Torre rapped into a 6-4-3 double play.
In the fourth, Ryan got Torre on a pop-up to shortstop Bud Harrelson.
Torre led off the sixth with a walk, one of eight Ryan issued in the game.
Frisella, who relieved in the seventh, struck out Torre leading off the eighth.
“At least it was another Italian who stopped me,” Torre told the Post-Dispatch.
The Mets won, 7-0, as Ryan and Frisella combined to limit the Cardinals to three hits. Boxscore
With the streak broken, Torre experienced a brief skid, going hitless in four of five games (1-for-15) and seeing his batting average drop to .340.
He went on to lead the National League in batting that season with a .363 average and 230 hits.
Ken Boyer, hitting coach for the 1971 Cardinals, cited Torre’s “short stride, quick stroke and great stength” for his success. Another Cardinals coach, George Kissell, told The Sporting News that Torre was able to focus on hitting when the Cardinals settled on him as their third baseman.
“For the first time since he joined the club (in 1969), he was able to have a closed mind about playing one position,” Kissell said. “Before, he had to be thinking about first base and catching as well as third base.”
Recalling 1971, Torre told Cardinals Yearbook in 2014, “It was magical, no question. I used to go to sleep at night, knowing which pitcher I would see the next day, and, in my mind, I knew which pitch I wanted to hit off him.”
_ Albert Pujols, 13 grand slams with the Cardinals. Pujols hit five of his grand slams in 2009, tying Ernie Banks of the 1955 Cubs for the National League single-season record. His 13th grand slam for the Cardinals came on Aug. 18, 2022, versus the Rockies’ Austin Gomber. With the three grand slams Pujols hit for the Angels, he totaled 16 in his career in the major leagues.
In researching Cardinals history, I found an item in the Jan. 10, 1970, edition of The Sporting News that stunned and amazed.
In the first inning, with Red Schoendienst on first and two outs, Boyer hit a drive that struck Podres in the left forearm.
_ 2005: The Cardinals opened with a 3-4 record. Included in that stretch were back-to-back 10-4 and 13-4 poundings by the Phillies that led to concerns about St. Louis’ starting pitching. Jeff Suppan gave up 10 hits and six runs in four innings and Chris Carpenter was torched for 10 hits and eight runs in 3.1 innings. Carpenter finished with 21 wins, Suppan had 16 wins and the Cardinals earned the National League Central championship with a 100-62 record.
Managed by Branch Rickey, the 1919 Cardinals scored a total of 10 runs in their first eight games. Their only win in that stretch was by a 1-0 score against the Cubs. 
RetroSimba 