Zero Game, Zero Hour for Cardinals

ST. LOUIS — In 1968, the Cardinals were leading the World Series, three games to one. But then the Detroit Tigers won the next three. The score of Game 6 was 13-1, which was the worst beating St. Louis ever took in a postseason baseball game . . . until Monday night.

Braves 14, Cards zero, zip, nada, nothing, goose egg.

Bob Gibson, who struck out 35 men in that ’68 World Series, and Lou Brock, who batted .464, were co-throwers of the ceremonial first pitch before Atlanta came to bat for Game 5 of this National League championship series at Busch Stadium, where 56,782 fans, Brock and Gibson included, had come to see St. Louis take the pennant.

It was the last good pitch a Cardinal made.

At 4:13 p.m., Pacific time, a Todd Stottlemyre offering--his first--was looped by Marquis Grissom into right field for a plain old single.

By 4:51 p.m., the Braves had 10 hits from their first 14 batters. Stottlemyre got throttlemyred.

And, at ABC-TV affiliates coast-to-coast, this special edition of “Monday Night Baseball” was being roundly hooted as Fox television’s funniest program of the fall season.

The hits just kept on coming.

Atlanta got 22 of them. Mark Lemke got four--in four innings! Javy Lopez got four--but he needed five at-bats, the bum. John Smoltz got two--and he’s a pitcher. Rafael Belliard got one--and he’s Rafael Belliard. The only guys from Atlanta who went hitless were, uh, let’s see, I think Terry Pendleton, Luis Polonia and former President Jimmy Carter.

“We kept piling it on,” said Chipper Jones, obviously thinking Packers-49ers, like most of us by 6 o’clock.

Jones was held to two hits and three runs batted in. He could be benched, with a pay cut.

Those 14 runs meant a lot to the Chipster, who sounded a little chipped off, frankly, saying, “We’re kind of used to our offense getting criticized. It’s the same old story. It’s always our good pitching when we win, but our offense that’s stinking when we lose.”

So, what got into these Braves?

Atlanta second sacker Lemke didn’t know. His words of wisdom: “Some of our bloops went in.”

St. Louis Manager Tony La Russa didn’t care. His words of wisdom: “We’re not going to talk about bloopers that fell.”

What did Tony talk about?

Well, for one thing, that “big, crooked number in the top of the first,” La Russa said, the one behind Atlanta’s name on the scoreboard, that big, ugly “5.”

Five runs for Cy Young Smoltz, before he had to throw a pitch.

You think this made Smoltz smile? You think it pleased a Brave pitcher to have his stinking offense go out and give him the old 14-run cushion? You bet your foam-rubber tomahawk, it did.

A mock-greedy Smoltz said, “You wish it counts for two [wins], but it doesn’t. It’s only one. You would think that a 10-run rule would count for two.”

I have to give the Braves credit. They didn’t hit this way against the Dodgers. They hit against the Dodgers as though they were batting with foam-rubber tomahawks.

Then they go out and win like this, in a baseball version of Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland.

St. Louis was ready to party. Busch Stadium drew the largest crowd in Missouri baseball history. Folks in town were thinking New York Yankees, probably the same way they did when Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Cardinals personally put away the Yankees in a World Series 70 years ago this month, which was later immortalized on film by Ronald Reagan, whose Grover is almost as famous as his Gipper.

You have to hand it to these Cardinal disciples. They have faith. At one point, organist Ernie Hays struck up, “Here we go, Cardinals, here we go,” and the fans stomped their feet and clapped along, imploring a second-string catcher named Danny Sheaffer to get a hit. The score was 11-0.

They chanted “Ozzie! Ozzie!” in the seventh, when Smith came to bat. These fans are sharp. They knew that if anything, well, odd, but not unprecedented, should happen at Atlanta this week, they would never see the retiring Ozzie bat in person again.

Oz popped out.

When a Brave homered into a patch of grass behind the center-field fence, making the score 14-0, a fan waded through the vegetation, retrieved the ball and threw it back onto the field. It was one last dramatic gesture, just in case the World Series ends up someplace else.