Pirates 5 Cardinals 4

Well, I said before the series if we took two we'd be headed off in the right direction, and we did it, but barely. I've been waiting for years for our inability to grasp the fundamental skills of baseball (like running the bases) to win a game for us, and sure enough today our own Abraham Nunez (now wearing Cardinal Red) made possibly the worst baserunning play in the history of baseball. Worse than anything Matt Lawton has done, worse than those goofy plays where Giles would end up on third base with someone else and we'd find a way to get both people tagged out (which happened twice in two years I believe), this is possibly the worst baserunning play since Merkle's Boner (for those not in the know, it's not dirty, click the link for an explanation). For anyone that missed this let me recap. The play started with a runner on second (I don't remember or care who, maybe Grudzielanek) and good ol' Abe on first. Yadier Molina, Pirate Killer, was at the plate. He crushed a ball into the right center gap off Ollie. Grudzielanek (or whoever) easily scored from second, but somehow Nunez's brain exploded. Halfway between first and second, he froze. For some reason he thought that Matt Lawton had made the catch (which would have required maybe more effort than Lawton has put forth all year). Molina, who was cruising into second for an easy double stopped when he saw Nunez in front of him. Nunez stared at Molina, THEN RAN PAST HIM BACK TOWARDS FIRST BASE!!! This means that MOLINA was out for passing the lead runner. That's right, Nunez ran backwards, passing the runner behind him and turning him into an out. And he wasn't done. After he passed Molina, he stopped again. Molina ran back to first (though he was already out) and Jose Castillo tagged Nunez (who was standing between first and second like a deer in the headlights) out. Talk about a double play, and just how we drew it up. Instead of being up 4-3 with runners on second and third with only one out and Jason Marquis (their .368 hitting pitcher) at the plate, the Cardinals found themselves out of the inning (though still up 4-3, they did have that going for them, which was nice).

I'm going to say they got what they deserved after Molina tried to start up some trouble in the first, yelling at both Jason Bay and Daryle Ward, accusing them of stealing signs. Jason Bay seemed to have taken this personally (either that or he knew what pitch was coming) because he more or less singlehandedly kept us in this game today, with a three run dinger in the third (when we were down 3-0) and a game tying solo shot in the ninth to tie things at 4. Jose Castillo finished things off with a solo homer to lead off the 10th, and then Mesa held the lead (of course by putting two people on base with one out, then getting a DP, that's a save Jose Mesa style).

So we got lucky twice in St. Louis, and so what? We won as many games in these four in St. Louis as we did in our previous ten. We're going to Washington, where the Nats are just dying to lose some games, before returning to a more normal schedule. I said before, if we could go 4-3 over the seven in St. Louis and DC, we'd be back on the right track. We're halfway there.