A night at the Ball Park, by The Polack MSgt. Or - How I spent my 1 night summer vacation. Ahem
My wife and I were at Bush Stadium (Busch3 in the local vernacular) last night to watch the Cardinals host the Brewers in a NL Central match with heavy playoff implications.
Some background...
The Cards have been up and down all season, but had won 6 of the last 8 coming in to last night and are tied with the idle Cubs in 1st place.
The Brewers had gone cold recently and have fallen a bit in the standings - but still remain just 2 games behind in second place.
On the mound for the cards was one of their young pitchers, Dakota Hudson. He's been showing signs lately, but has been disappointing this year so far. Too often he pitches into long pitch counts. He seems to always get to 3 & 2, which leads to too many walks.
Typical young starter problems to be sure but disappointing nonetheless.
The Brewers on the other hand brought an attack that can be summed up as Yelich, Moustakis and the Bullpen.
Yelich continues to be a force of nature. He won the NL MVP last year, and is having a BETTER season this year.
How so? Well, with 37 games left he's already hit 9 more homers than he managed in all of his MVP winning 2018 season.
Dude is scary good.
We know this in the Lou. In fact when the Cardinals' manager called for an intentional walk late in the game against Yelich - the crowd responded with enthusiastic applause.
I used to watch Albert Pujols in his prime and when Albert was on, every at bat was a tense confrontation that compelled you to watch.
Well - Christian Yelich has been that guy all year.
With all that in mind we hopped into the Ford and headed to St Louis. The drive was a bit tense getting there though...
It was a very hot very humid day and as evening rolled in several STRONG thunderstorms popped up around the area and my wife and I drove through a particularly powerful cell on our way into town.
On the other hand, the weather radar said downtown was clear so we just crossed our fingers and motivated on over the river to the stadium.
Glad we did too. Turns out the storm broke the heat a bit and since the sun was down the stadium didn't become a sauna the way a day game does after a rainstorm.
My wife was smart enough to bring a towel so after we dried our seats it was just a comfortable, breezy evening.
Perfect night for a ball game.
And - What a game we watched.
Dakota Hudson was on the money - All night long, Yadi put up his glove and Dakota hit it.
When he did miss, he missed OFF the plate, not over the middle of it.
So while the pitch count was mounting quicker than I'd have liked, he was keeping the Brewers baffled. More importantly he was keeping them off the bases.
On the offensive side the Cards had few base runners in the early innings - the Brewers pitcher looked sharp as well.
The Redbirds did manage to pull off a manufactured run when Schildt called a hit and run with 2 outs, Kolten Wong (one of the fastest players in St Louis) on second and Dexter Fowler at the dish.
They pulled it off perfectly as Dex smacked a bloop texas leaguer single and Wong scored easily.
Then came one of the hardest hit balls I have ever seen - And I saw Willie Stargel go 3rd deck in Three Rivers Stadium once.
Paul DeJong, our young Short Stop hammered a hanging slider into the facing of the upper deck - on a rope.
It looked like that ball was still rising when it hit the neon "M" in the Big Mac Land sign.
Dakota didn't need any more scoring than those 3 runs because even though he had thrown a buttload of pitches he was perfect heading into the 6th inning.
Well he wasn’t perfect leaving the inning… He walked a batter, but got through the 6th with the no hitter intact, but was pulled 2 outs into the 7th when he walked another hitter and had a pitch count 112.
Giovanny Gallegos came in to finish the 7th, did - came back out to finish the 8th but didn't - Allowing the only hit of the game, a ground rule double that brought Yelich to the plate for the aforementioned intentional walk.
Miller, our only lefty pitcher got a strike out, stranding 2 Brewers then he came back out for a perfect 9th.
The wife and I left the stadium happy and the Cardinals ended the evening all alone in 1st place in the National League Central.
THE END