The Cardinals twice have experienced back-to-back battery power.
Tom Pagnozzi and Omar Olivares in 1994 and Eli Marrero and Rick Ankiel in 2000 are the only Cardinals catcher-pitcher batteries to hit consecutive home runs, according to David Vincent of the Society for American Baseball Research.
The home run by Ankiel was the first of his big-league career.
Here is a look at those feats:
Magic in Miami
On Aug. 10, 1994, in the next-to-last Cardinals game before the players’ strike that shortened the season, Olivares and Pagnozzi led a 12-4 St. Louis rout of the Marlins in Miami.
Pagnozzi was 2-for-4 with a walk, three runs scored and two RBI. Olivares pitched seven innings and earned his third win of the season.
The highlights came in the sixth. With one on, one out and the Cardinals ahead, 4-2, Pagnozzi, batting eighth, hit a two-run home run off starter David Weathers. Olivares, batting ninth, followed with a solo shot, his third big-league homer.
“I just swing hard,” Olivares said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Boxscore
Dream come true
Six years later, on April 20, 2000, at St. Louis, Marrero and Ankiel matched the feat in a 14-1 Cardinals triumph over the Padres.
In the fifth, with the Cardinals ahead, 10-0, Vicente Palacios was pitching in relief for the Padres. Palacios, 36, was making his first big-league appearance since June 1995 when he was with the Cardinals.
Marrero, batting eighth, connected off Palacios for his second home run of the game, a 412-foot shot off the Stadium Club at Busch Stadium II. Ankiel, 20, followed with a 380-foot home run into the bullpen.
“That’s all I’ve got,” Ankiel said of his power stroke. “I didn’t know it was gone when I hit it … It was great. As a little kid, that’s what you dream of.”
Ankiel was 3-for-3 with a RBI and two runs scored. He pitched five shutout innings and earned his second win of the season, yielding two hits and seven walks and striking out four.
“None of those hits were accidents,” said Cardinals manager Tony La Russa. “He’s almost as good a hitter as he is a pitcher.”
Said Cardinals hitting coach Mike Easler of Ankiel: “What it took me 10 years in the minors leagues to learn, he’s learned at 20 years old.” Boxscore
Unable to control his pitches and set back by injuries, Ankiel quit pitching in spring training 2005, learned to play outfield in the minors and returned to the Cardinals as an outfielder in 2007. He hit 76 career home runs in the big leagues, with two as a pitcher and the rest as an outfielder or pinch-hitter.
Previously: How Rick Ankiel made happy return to St. Louis as pitcher
Previously: Rick Ankiel and the decision that altered his career
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