RetroSimba

In a painfully fitting ending to the most miserable inning experienced by the Cardinals, a player who helped them win a World Series title delivered a hit that prevented them from earning another championship.

On Oct. 26, 1985, in Game 6 of the World Series at Kansas City, Dane Iorg looped a two-run single against Todd Worrell in the bottom of the ninth inning, lifting the Royals from a one-run deficit to a 2-1 victory that evened the best-of-seven series at 3-3. The Royals won Game 7 the next night, clinching their first World Series crown.

Three years earlier, Iorg had served as a designated hitter for the Cardinals in the 1982 World Series. He batted .529 (9-for-17) with four doubles, a triple and four runs scored, helping the Cardinals defeat the Brewers in seven games.

In eight seasons (1977-84) with St. Louis, Iorg batted .294, including .303 in 105 games in 1980 and .294 in 102 games in 1982. The Cardinals sold his contract to the Royals in May 1984.

Damn Denkinger

Iorg was in a position to beat the Cardinals in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series because of an infamous ninth-inning blown call by first-base umpire Don Denkinger, who ruled leadoff batter Jorge Orta safe at first base, even though Worrell, fielding a throw from first baseman Jack Clark, clearly had tagged the bag with his foot before Orta did.

With Orta on first, the Cardinals dug a deeper hole when Clark failed to catch a pop-up by Steve Balboni in foul territory _ Balboni, given a reprieve, singled _ and when Darrell Porter let a slider elude him for a passed ball, allowing runners on first and second to advance to second and third.

After Hal McRae was walked intentionally, loading the bases with one out, Royals manager Dick Howser chose Iorg to bat for reliever Dan Quisenberry.

Mix and match

In his only other at-bat of the 1985 World Series, Iorg faced Worrell in the opener and flied out to right, ending a game the Cardinals won, 3-1, but Clark had a bad feeling as Iorg batted in the ninth inning of Game 6.

“When Dane came up there, the Royals had the matchup they wanted,” Clark told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Iorg has always been tough in those situations because he puts the ball in play.’

Though a left-hander, Ricky Horton, was loosening in the Cardinals bullpen, manager Whitey Herzog chose to stick with Worrell, a right-handed rookie.

The 1985 Cardinals hadn’t lost a lead in the ninth inning all year.

“If I thought about everything that was going on around me, I would have never made it to the plate,” Iorg told the Sacramento Bee. “I would have had a heart attack before I got there.”

The showdown

Worrell’s first pitch to Iorg was taken for a ball.

“I wasn’t looking for a pitch in a specific location,” Iorg said to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I was just looking for something I could get my bat on.”

The next pitch was belt high.

“He jammed me with a fastball,” Iorg told the Columbus Dispatch.

Said Worrell to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “I got it in on his hands.”

Iorg swung and lifted a soft liner into right field.

“It broke my bat, but I had a good enough stroke to get it to the outfield,” Iorg said. “I knew it was a hit. I was just hoping it would score two runs.”

Said Clark: “A nice piece of hitting.”

The throw

Right fielder Andy Van Slyke, who had been shaded toward right-center, said, “That ball just died on the (artificial) grass when it should have taken a good bounce up to me.”

Van Slyke retrieved the ball and unleashed a low, accurate throw toward the plate.

Pinch-runner Onix Concepcion scored easily from third with the tying run. Catcher Jim Sundberg, who had been on second base, was steaming toward the plate, representing the winning run.

“I couldn’t get the throw off I wanted to make,” said Van Slyke. “And the ball, it hung there in slow motion.”

Said Worrell: “If he (Iorg) hit it harder, we might have had a chance to get (Sundberg).”

Van Slyke’s peg was caught on the fly in front of the plate by Porter, who turned to try a sweep tag on Sundberg, diving head-first safely across the plate. Video

Special feeling

“Those are the kinds of situations that you dream about as a child when you’re in Little League or playing Babe Ruth ball,” Iorg said to the Akron Beacon-Journal. “To fulfill such a dream is very special.” Boxscore

Asked whether he had mixed emotions about beating his former team (Herzog had called Iorg “one of my favorite people.”), Iorg replied, “I didn’t think about that at all. That was a new pitcher (Worrell) that I basically never played with and a new team. The situation was important enough without thinking about the past and who it was against.”

(In the 2002 book “Whitey’s Boys,” Iorg admitted, “I had better friends on the Cardinals than on the Royals.”)

Regarding the historical impact of the hit, Iorg told the Sacramento Bee, “When I’m fishing with my brother for steelhead on the Mad River in northern California, it’ll probably hit me then. Right now, I’d like to think I did this for my father (in the lumber business). He sacrificed a lot for me to play baseball. This, in some way, is paying him back.”

Hero and villain

In his column for the Post-Dispatch, Kevin Horrigan best summarized the feelings of Cardinals fans.

“Dane Iorg got to be a hero,” Horrigan wrote. “That was the only good thing about the inning from an eastern Missouri point of view. Dane Iorg, a former Cardinal and one of the nicest men ever to wear the birds on the bat, got to be a hero by driving in the two runs with a single to right.

“In 1982, he was a World Series hero for the Cardinals. In 1985, he killed them. This was his job. Don Denkinger also killed them. This was not his job.”

Horrigan concluded, “Jesse James used to rob trains for a living. He’d ride up with his gang, pull a gun and heist the loot. Don Denkinger ought to be able to relate to that. He robbed the Cardinals blind last night.”

Previously: Dane Iorg excelled as World Series DH for Cardinals