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How foes fared facing Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton in a game

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on March 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton appeared together in a regular-season game as Cardinals three times. Two of those games represented milestones for Carlton: his big-league debut and his first major-league save. In all three, Gibson started and Carlton relieved.

The first time Gibson and Carlton appeared together in a Cardinals regular-season game was April 12, 1965, the season opener for the defending World Series champions against the Cubs at Chicago.

Gibson left after yielding five runs in 3.1 innings.

In the 11th, with the score tied at 10-10, the Cubs had Ron Santo on second with one out and George Altman at the plate. Red Schoendienst, in his regular-season debut as Cardinals manager, lifted Barney Schultz and brought in Carlton to face Altman.

Carlton, 20, making his big-league debut, walked Altman. Schoendienst then brought in Bob Purkey, who got out of the jam without allowing a run.

At that point, the game was called because of darkness, ending in a tie. All the statistics counted. Boxscore

Mopping up

Four months later, on Aug. 25, 1965, Gibson faced the Cubs at St. Louis and gave up six runs in seven innings.

With the Cubs ahead, 6-1, Carlton relieved and pitched two scoreless innings. The Cubs won, 6-3.

Joey Amalfitano, a career .244 hitter, had a single off Gibson and a single off Carlton, becoming the first batter to get hits off both Cardinals in the same regular-season game. Boxscore

Carlton a closer

Entering the 1967 season, Schoendienst told The Sporting News, “We now have men like Dick Hughes, Steve Carlton and Nelson Briles, who can start or relieve. In fact, I’d say only Bob Gibson and Ray Washburn would have to be regarded strictly as starters.”

On April 16, 1967, Gibson faced the Astros at St. Louis. Lou Brock hit a pair of solo home runs off former teammate Mike Cuellar and the Cardinals built leads of 5-0 and 7-3. Gibson, though, wasn’t sharp.

“Gibson admitted he did not have anything today and that he was struggling throughout,” wrote Tom McNamara of the Edwardsville (Ill.) Intelligencer.

The Astros, paced by John Bateman’s two-run home run, scored four in the sixth off Gibson, tying the score at 7-7. The Cardinals regained the lead, 8-7, in the bottom half of the inning on an Orlando Cepeda home run off Carroll Sembera.

After Jim Landis led off the seventh with a double against Gibson, Carlton, making his first appearance of the season, relieved him.

Carlton retired Joe Morgan on a fly out and struck out Jim Wynn and Eddie Mathews, stranding Landis. Like Carlton, Morgan and Mathews were destined for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Cardinals scored three off Turk Farrell in the bottom of the seventh, extending their lead to 11-7.

In the eighth, Carlton struck out the first two batters, Bob Aspromonte and Aaron Pointer, giving him four consecutive strikeouts, before Bateman grounded out.

The Astros scored a run in the ninth off Carlton. The key hit in the inning was a Landis double.

Landis, a career .247 hitter, joined Amalfitano as the only batters to get hits off Gibson and Carlton in the same regular-season game.

Carlton earned the save for Gibson in an 11-8 Cardinals victory. Carlton’s line: 3 innings, 1 run, 1 hit, 1 walk, 4 strikeouts. Boxscore

Carlton would earn 329 big-league wins but only two saves. His second came 20 years after his first.

On April 9, 1987, in his first regular-season appearance for the Indians, Carlton, 42, got the save with four shutout innings in relief of Phil Niekro, 48, in a 14-3 Cleveland victory at Toronto. Boxscore

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The sad spring of 1995 with Cardinals replacement team

Posted in Hitters, Managers, Pitchers on March 9, 2015| 8 Comments »

Instead of working with established big-leaguers, Bob Gibson spent the spring training of 1995 teaching basic grips to pitchers who normally would have had no chance to be in a Cardinals camp.

Spring training in 1995 was an odd, depressing experience for the Cardinals and other big-league teams because of the labor dispute between players and owners.

The players’ strike that began in August 1994 carried into spring training 1995. None of the players on the Cardinals’ big-league roster reported to camp at St. Petersburg, Fla. Instead, the Cardinals, like other clubs, brought in replacement players.

Hall of Fame helper

Manager Joe Torre and his staff were required to train the replacement players, with the intent of having them ready to open the regular season on April 3.

Gibson, the Hall of Fame pitcher who carried the Cardinals to two World Series championships, was hired by Torre to be a Cardinals coach.

Replacement player Paul Anderson, 26, a right-hander who was a combined 4-6 with a 6.65 ERA for two Cardinals farm clubs in 1994, asked Gibson for assistance in learning the proper grip to throw a slider.

“I was doing it wrong, so I did it the way he taught me,” Anderson told Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I like it a lot better. I’m learning from the best.”

Scribe and rejects

The 55-player Cardinals replacement team at training camp had no one who had appeared in a major-league game.

In the Cardinals’ exhibition opener against the Indians on March 4 at St. Petersburg, Mike Hinkle started and pitched three scoreless innings for St. Louis. Hinkle, 29, had last played professional baseball in Italy in 1993.

Outfielder Doug Radziewicz, 25, an aspiring journalist who was filing reports from camp for his hometown newspaper in Somerville, N.J., drove in the winning run with a pinch-hit single in the eighth, lifting the Cardinals to a 4-2 victory.

“You can’t judge baseball from one day, but it was well-played,” Torre said after the game. “The thing you’re concerned with is that playing for the first time they’re a little in awe.”

Walt Jocketty, hired in October 1994 to replace Dal Maxvill as general manager, was asked what it was like to watch replacement players instead of big-leaguers in his first Cardinals spring training game. “As long as I’ve got Joe (Torre) here, we can hold hands and go through this together,” Jocketty said.

Wrote Hummel: “There were no pickets, as the striking players earlier had advertised, which was good because the minor leaguers were nervous enough as it was. The clubhouse was very quiet before the game.”

Fans weren’t buying into replacement baseball. Hummel reported the Cardinals were averaging 1,470 tickets sold per exhibition game instead of the usual 5,000. In March, 54 percent of respondents to a Post-Dispatch poll said they probably or absolutely wouldn’t pay to see a game played by replacements.

Chasing a dream

The Cardinals broke camp with a roster of 32 replacement players, intending to open the season with them.

Anderson, Hinkle and Radziewicz were on the Opening Day roster. In a late move, the Cardinals also acquired Glenn Sutko, a catcher who had one hit in 10 at-bats for the 1991 Reds.

Among other replacement Cardinals on the Opening Day roster:

_ Ty Griffin, second baseman. A No. 1 pick of the Cubs in the 1988 amateur draft, Griffin also had played for the U.S. Olympic baseball team. He flopped in the Cubs system and spent the 1994 season with a pair of independent league teams.

_ Larry Shikles, starting pitcher. In eight seasons in the minor league systems of the Red Sox and Athletics, the right-hander compiled a 70-68 record.

_ Howard Prager, first baseman. He hit .239 for the Cardinals’ Class AAA Louisville club in 1994.

_ John “Skeets” Thomas, outfielder. He slugged 17 home runs for Louisville in 1994.

_ Tony Diggs, outfielder. A sixth-round draft choice of the Brewers in 1989, Diggs hit .215 for the Cardinals’ Class AA Arkansas team in 1994.

_ Anthony Lewis, outfielder. An eighth-round draft pick of the Cardinals in 1989, Lewis hit a combined .230 for two St. Louis farm clubs in 1994.

“We went with the players on the morning side of the mountain rather than the twilight side of the hill,” Torre said, explaining why the Cardinals (with the exception of Sutko) chose players without big-league experience.

On April 2, 1995, the day before the season was to open, the 234-day strike ended. The season opener was moved to April 26; spring training was re-opened for players on big-league rosters. The replacement players either were assigned to the minors or released.

Said Torre: “It feels weird starting all over again.”

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Rick Ankiel and the decision that altered his career

Posted in Hitters, Pitchers on March 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »

(Updated March 9, 2019)

Disheartened by what he described as an erosion of his spirit and altering of his personality, Rick Ankiel changed the course of his baseball career.

On March 9, 2005, Ankiel announced he was transforming from a pitcher to an outfielder.

Ankiel, 25, entered 2005 spring training at Jupiter, Fla., as a strong candidate to earn a Cardinals Opening Day roster spot as a left-handed reliever.

After posting an 11-7 record with 194 strikeouts in 175 innings in 2000, Ankiel experienced a meltdown in the postseason against the Braves and Mets (nine wild pitches and 11 walks in four innings). He pitched briefly for the 2001 Cardinals and suffered a series of elbow injuries before returning to the big leagues with St. Louis as a reliever in September 2004.

Ankiel pitched in the Puerto Rico winter league after the 2004 Cardinals season, but cut short his stay there after experiencing a twinge in his left elbow. When he got to Cardinals camp in February 2005, his throwing sessions were erratic.

Change of plans

On March 8, 2005, the day before he was scheduled to make his spring training debut against the Marlins in a morning B squad game, Ankiel approached Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and informed him he was retiring as a player.

In his 2017 book “The Phenom,” Ankiel explained, “In my heart, I believed I could pitch in the big leagues. I’d earned it. It was just so hard. It was just so burdensome. It was time to stop, for those reasons. I was exhausted.”

Ankiel’s agent, Scott Boras, called Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty and asked whether the club would be willing to let Ankiel go to the minor leagues, be an outfielder and get a chance to earn his way back to the majors. When Jocketty agreed, Boras called Ankiel, who was surprised by his agent’s actions, and convinced him to give the transformation a try.

The next day, Ankiel took indoor batting practice off pitches from Cardinals scout Jim Leyland. In a hastily called press conference, Ankiel announced his plans to switch positions and explained why he was giving up pitching.

“The frustration of not being effective, not being able to go out there and replicate my mechanics, and the way it affected me off the field, wasn’t worth it,” Ankiel said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The reward wasn’t there. I feel relieved now. It’s time to move on.

“This whole time, the frustration has built up. It seemed like it was eroding my spirit and affecting my personality off the field as well. It just became apparent it was time for me to move on and become an outfielder.”

According to the Post-Dispatch, Ankiel’s decision “stunned many within the Cardinals’ clubhouse.”

“Ongoing head case”

As a Cardinals pitcher, Ankiel hit .207 for his career with two home runs and nine RBI. He hadn’t played the outfield since his senior year at Port St. Lucie High School in Florida.

The reaction to his plan drew skepticism.

Bernie Miklasz, Post-Dispatch columnist: “The Cardinals wasted too much time, and emotion, in the lost cause that is Rick Ankiel. And now, as the organization recoils from Ankiel’s stunning surrender in his mission of regaining a foothold on the mound, the Cardinals are going to baby him one more time … It is time to stop treating Ankiel’s ongoing head case as if he’s a charity case … It’s time to let Ankiel move on with his life. The Cardinals did their part. Now they need to get out of the day care business.”

Rob Neyer, baseball analyst for ESPN.com: “He’s immensely talented, but almost certainly not talented enough to hit major-league pitching with any sort of consistency.”

Road to redemption

Ankiel began receiving instruction from coach Dave McKay on outfield play and from coach Hal McRae on hitting.

“I stood across from Dave McKay, an exceptional outfield coach, and put my feet where he told me to, and began to learn to become a big-league center fielder,” Ankiel said in his book. “I hit off a tee, and hit soft-toss, and hit batting practice fastballs, and faced real pitchers, and began to learn to be a big-league hitter.’

Out of options with the Cardinals, Ankiel could have been chosen on waivers by any of the other 29 big-league clubs before he was sent to the minors in the spring of 2005, but no one claimed him.

Ankiel spent 2005 in the minors, sat out 2006 because of a knee injury and hit 32 home runs in 102 games for Class AAA Memphis in 2007. On Aug. 9, 2007, he returned to the Cardinals as an outfielder and hit a home run against the Padres. Boxscore

Ankiel hit .285 with 11 home runs and 39 RBI in 47 games for the 2007 Cardinals. The next year, he slugged 25 home runs for St. Louis.

From 2007-2013, Ankiel was an outfielder for the Cardinals, Royals, Braves, Nationals, Astros and Mets.

In 2010, a decade after his wild streak against the Braves in the National League Division Series, he hit a home run for them in the NL Division Series against the Giants. Boxscore Ankiel and Babe Ruth are the only big-league players to both start a postseason game as a pitcher and hit a home run in the postseason as a position player.

Previously: How Rick Ankiel made happy return to St. Louis as pitcher

Previously: Rick Ankiel and his last hurrah as a pitcher

Previously: Pitching or hitting, Rick Ankiel was marvel and mystery

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How Carlos Villanueva put a scare into 2006 Cardinals

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on February 26, 2015| 1 Comment »

(Updated Feb. 8, 2016)

As a rookie, Carlos Villanueva almost kept the 2006 Cardinals from qualifying for the postseason and winning their first World Series title in 24 years.

Nine years later, Villanueva was competing for the 2015 Cardinals as an effective member of their relief staff.

On Oct. 1, 2006, the Cardinals entered the final day of the regular season needing a win over the Brewers at St. Louis or an Astros loss to the Braves in Atlanta to clinch outright the National League Central Division title. If the Cardinals lost and the Astros won, the Cardinals would need to win a regular-season makeup game against the Giants to clinch the division title and avoid a one-game playoff with the Astros to advance to the National League Division Series against the Padres.

Rookie starters

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa gambled and started rookie Anthony Reyes against the Brewers on three days of rest, choosing to hold back Chris Carpenter in the hope St. Louis would clinch the division crown versus Milwaukee and have their ace available for Game 1 of the NL Division Series.

Brewers manager Ned Yost chose Villanueva as his starter. Villanueva had faced the Cardinals for the first time on Sept. 20 at Milwaukee and pitched seven scoreless innings in a 1-0 Brewers victory. Boxscore

Reyes flopped.

The Brewers scored four in the first on a two-run home run by Prince Fielder, a solo home run by Geoff Jenkins and a RBI-single by David Bell. Reyes was lifted before he could complete the opening inning.

Keep me in, coach

Given a 4-0 lead, Villanueva faced Cardinals leadoff batter Aaron Miles. who “smacked a sharp one-hopper off Villanueva’s pitching hand,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“It felt bad,” Villanueva said.

Yost went to the mound and asked his right-hander, “How are you doing?”

“Of course, I said, ‘I’m doing great,’ ” Villanueva said.

In truth, the hand throbbed.

Said Yost: “I came close to taking him out. He couldn’t even swing a bat. I kept an eye on him and if I noticed a drop-off in effectiveness I would have taken him out. But I didn’t see it.”

Villanueva baffled the Cardinals. With each inning, their hopes of beating the Brewers dimmed.

Bailout by Braves

Then, in the fifth, a roar erupted from the Busch Stadium crowd as the final from Atlanta was posted: Braves 3, Astros 1. The Braves had prevailed behind six shutout innings from starter John Smoltz and a home run by Jeff Francoeur. Boxscore

The loss by the Astros meant the Cardinals had clinched the division title, regardless of the outcome of their game with the Brewers.

As fans cheered in appreciation, Villanueva stepped off the mound. Derryl Cousins, the home plate umpire, motioned for the game to resume, but Villanueva lingered, letting “the celebration last a few more seconds,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

“I wanted to give them their moment,” Villanueva said. “I knew what was going on.”

Drama in ninth

Villanueva shut out the Cardinals through eight innings, extending his scoreless streak against them to 15 innings over two starts.

In the bottom of the ninth, with the Brewers ahead, 5-0, Villanueva got Miles to fly out to right. Then, the Cardinals thundered to life. Chris Duncan launched a 414-foot home run. Albert Pujols followed with a 424-foot shot.

Francisco Cordero relieved and struck out Preston Wilson, but Scott Spiezio followed with a home run, cutting the deficit to two. Cordero then ended the drama _ and the regular season _ by striking out Juan Encarnacion, preserving a 5-3 victory for Villanueva and the Brewers. Boxscore

Unfazed, the Cardinals regrouped and beat the Padres in the NL Division Series, the Mets in the NL Championship Series and the Tigers in the World Series.

Previously: 2006 was critical to Tony La Russa earning Hall of Fame status

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Denny McLain on Dizzy Dean, Bob Gibson, 1968 Cardinals

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on February 2, 2015| 2 Comments »

Since 1931, three pitchers have achieved 30 wins in a season: Denny McLain (31 with 1968 Tigers), Dizzy Dean (30 with 1934 Cardinals) and Lefty Grove (31 with 1931 Athletics).

I met McLain on Jan. 31, 2015, at a sports card show at the American Legion Hall in Sebastian, Fla. Richard Stone, who produces the show, was kind in introducing me to McLain and arranging the interview.

McLain was friendly, talkative, outspoken.

The pitcher, who used to drink a case of Pepsi a day, said he had dropped 180 pounds, crediting a procedure called bariatric surgery, which removed a portion of his stomach.

In 1968, when he won both the American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young awards, McLain had a 31-6 record, 1.96 ERA and 28 complete games. He won a second Cy Young Award in 1969, with a 24-9 record, 2.80 ERA and 23 complete games.

McLain was suspended by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn for part of the 1970 season because of his association with bookmakers. After his playing career, he twice went to prison: the first time on a conviction for racketeering and the second time on a conviction for embezzlement.

Here are excerpts from my tape-recorded interview with Denny McLain:

Q.: You are the last pitcher with 30 wins in a season. Do you think the achievement gets the credit it deserves?

Denny McLain: “As time goes by, the stories about it become greater, but the appreciation becomes a little less. Will anyone win 30 again? Obviously not. The game has changed. No else is going to do it.”

Q.: Do you think today’s major leaguers appreciate the feat?

Denny McLain: “A lot of players today don’t know historically what happened 30, 40 years ago. There are some, but they are the exceptions. Very few know or actually care. It’s about the paycheck. Despite how the current guys treat them, the former players still respect the players today. That’s the difference.

“Of course, we’re all a little jealous of the money. The guys today don’t understand what we did to get them to the place where they are today. We walked out (on strike) when we were making $20,000, $30,000 a year. I wonder if they were making $20,000, $30,000 a year today how many guys would walk out. Guys today win 15 games and make $30 million a year.”

Q.: Insane?

Denny McLain: “Insane is a kind word. They should be committed.”

Q.: You and Dizzy Dean are the last two pitchers to win 30 in a season. You both are considered to be free spirits. Do you see similarities to him?

Denny McLain: “Dizzy and I both had the same personalities. We got along super well because he was as nuts as I was.”

Q.: You got to meet him?

Denny McLain: “I met both Dizzy Dean and Lefty Grove.”

Q.: What was Dizzy Dean like?

Denny McLain: “He wanted to have a good time all the time. He was a big-time gambler. On the night before I won my 30th in 1968, Dizzy says to me, ‘How you feeling? Anything bothering you? Think you’re going to win tomorrow?’ At the time, I didn’t know he was a big-time gambler. Dizzy was soliciting information.”

Q.: What was Lefty Grove like?

Denny McLain: “Lefty Grove was the nicest man I ever met in my life. He was a class act. He was articulate. He knew the game.”

Q.: In 1966, at age 22, you were the starting pitcher for the American League in the All-Star Game at St. Louis and retired all 9 batters you faced …

Denny McLain: “Six of them are in the Hall of Fame.”

Q.: They would be Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Ron Santo and Joe Torre. Mays led off and struck out …

Denny McLain: “I had him 3-and-2. Bill Freehan, my catcher, called for a curve. In an All-Star Game, to call a curve on 3-and-2 is pretty drastic. I was so pumped up. I threw a curve that was one of the greatest I’ve ever thrown in my life. They call it a 6 o’clocker.” Boxscore

Q.: Then Clemente flied out and Aaron struck out …

Denny McLain: “In winter ball in 1964 in Puerto Rico, I played against Santurce. That team had Clemente and (Orlando) Cepeda. First time I pitched against them, I struck them out each four times. That’s when Clemente came up to me and said, ‘Why aren’t you in the big leagues?’ I said, ‘I am.’ ”

Q.: The story is that before the 1968 World Series you said you wanted not only for the Tigers to beat the Cardinals, you wanted to humiliate them. True?

Denny McLain: “I wanted us to beat them in four. I got tired of hearing about Bob Gibson’s (1.12) ERA. I kept saying, ‘If he’s that good, why didn’t he win some more games?’ I know one of the quotes I said was, ‘He won 22 games. I won 21 by the end of July.’ That really got everybody ticked off.”

Q.: Then in Game 1 of the World Series, Gibson strikes out 17, pitches a shutout and you get lifted after five innings …

Denny McLain: “There’s nothing you could do. We got beat 4-0. One of us was going to win and one of us was going to lose. I lost.” Boxscore

Q.: You and Gibson were matched again in Game 4. Again, he won …

Denny McLain: “We shouldn’t have played the game. It was played in a downpour. I was never a mudder.” Boxscore

Q.: In Game 6, you start against Ray Washburn, pitch a complete game and win …

Denny McLain: “That was my day. If we lose that game …”

Q.: The World Series is over …

Denny McLain: “It would have killed me.”

Q.: You received a cortisone shot for your right shoulder before that game. How much did that help?

Denny McLain: “I got the injection about an hour before the game. I got another touch to it about 20 minutes before I went to warm up. Took some kind of pill. I didn’t have any pain until the fifth or sixth inning.” Boxscore

Q.: You struck out seven, walked none, the Tigers win, 13-1 …

Denny McLain: “The thing that made me mad about that ballgame is there were two outs in the ninth and I had a shutout. Julian Javier got a base hit with a man on second. Boy, was I mad. It was just a lousy ground ball that went through the hole.”

Q.: Did you feel the win was redemption after two losses to Gibson?

Denny McLain: “They only had one pitcher. That was Gibson. The rest of them weren’t very good. We were surprised at how bad their pitching was. But what St. Louis did is much like what we did: Play fundamentally sound baseball. If you play the game soundly, you will win.”

Previously: Should Curt Flood have caught Jim Northrup’s drive?

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Gerald Perry and his controversial homer off Pedro Martinez

Posted in Games, Hitters, Opponents, Pitchers on January 14, 2015| 1 Comment »

For Cardinals pinch-hitter Gerald Perry, a controversial feat against a future ace salvaged an afternoon that began with a gaffe.

On April 13, 1993, Perry hit the first big-league home run yielded by Pedro Martinez, then a Dodgers rookie.

Twenty-two years later, on Jan. 6, 2015, Martinez was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot. In 18 seasons with the Dodgers, Expos, Red Sox, Mets and Phillies, Martinez produced a 219-100 record and 2.93 ERA with 3,154 strikeouts.

In 1993, Martinez was 21, a relief pitcher in his first full big-league season with the Dodgers.

Perry, 32, was an 11-year big-league veteran, an established professional, but he made a rookie mistake.

Room service, please

Perry thought the Cardinals and Dodgers were playing a night game at Los Angeles. Instead, it was a rare weekday afternoon starting time because the game was the Dodgers’ home opener.

According to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Perry “was resting at the Century Plaza Hotel, having room service and watching a movie (“The Bodyguard”) on television” when he got a call from Cardinals equipment manager Buddy Bates, informing him he was about 90 minutes late.

Perry took a cab to Dodger Stadium and arrived in the clubhouse about 45 minutes before the start of the game. “I was very embarrassed walking in,” Perry said.

The Dodgers led, 7-5, after six innings. Martinez, the Dodgers’ third pitcher of the game, had held St. Louis scoreless in the fifth and sixth. The right-hander was making his second appearance of the season and his fourth overall in the big leagues.

In the seventh, the Cardinals had two runners on base with two outs when manager Joe Torre called on Perry, a left-handed batter, to pinch-hit for reliever Les Lancaster.

Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers’ manager, stuck with Martinez.

Trouble if it’s fair

Perry swung at a high changeup and lined a deep drive down the right-field line.

As the ball carried toward the foul pole, Darryl Strawberry, the 6-foot-6 right fielder, “leaned over the waist-high wall” and reached for the ball, Hummel reported.

On KMOX radio, Cardinals broadcaster Mike Shannon told his audience, “Swing and a long one down the right-field line. It’s trouble if it stays fair … Well, we can’t tell.”

A fan with a glove caught the ball.

It landed just inside the foul line _ a three-run home run, giving the Cardinals an 8-7 lead.

Strawberry claimed the fan interfered.

“I would have had it,” said Strawberry. “I had it all the way. He just took it away.”

An inning after the home run, ushers escorted the fan from his seat. “Perhaps for his own safety,” Hummel wrote.

Cardinals catcher Hector Villanueva, who was in the bullpen, witnessed the fan being harassed by fellow spectators. “They were throwing stuff at him,” Villanueva said.

After viewing a video replay of Perry’s home run, Cardinals catcher Tom Pagnozzi opined, “There’s no way Strawberry would have caught that ball because the ball was already by him. What’s he whining about?”

Said Perry to the Orange County Register: “I was hoping and praying (Strawberry) wouldn’t catch it. Thanks to the fan, too.”

Martinez was lifted after completing the seventh. In the ninth, Pagnozzi hit a solo home run off Ricky Trlicek, extending the St. Louis lead to 9-7, and Lee Smith shut down the Dodgers in their half of the inning, earning his 358th save, then a major league record. Boxscore

When Perry got back to the clubhouse, he found a sign, created by his teammates, taped over his locker that informed him of the next Cardinals-Dodgers game. It read: “Night game, Rookie.”

Redbirds vs. Pedro

Martinez took the loss. Against the Cardinals in his career, he would finish 4-4 with a 3.62 ERA in 16 regular-season appearances, including 11 starts. He also earned a win against them with seven shutout innings in Game 3 of the 2004 World Series. Boxscore

Martinez gave up 10 career home runs versus the Cardinals. Six of those 10 occurred in three games.

_ John Mabry and Gary Gaetti connected for home runs against Martinez on July 28, 1996, in a 6-4 Cardinals victory over the Expos at St. Louis. Boxscore

_ Mark Grudzielanek and Abraham Nunez homered for the Cardinals against Martinez in a 7-6 St. Louis victory over the Mets on May 14, 2005, at New York. Boxscore

_ Troy Glaus and Rick Ankiel hit home runs off Martinez in an 8-7 Cardinals triumph over the Mets at St. Louis on July 2, 2008. Boxscore

Previously: How Joe Girardi became a member of Cardinals’ family

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