Contributed by austro
St. Louis at Houston
Minute Maid Park
July 9, 2010
Houston 0, St Louis 8
WP: Wainwright (13-5) | LP: Norris (2-6)
This one started out as an interesting pitching matchup, since Wainwright owns the Astros and Norris has owned the Cards recently. And for 7 innings that held true, although Norris surrendered single runs in the first and the second. The Astros, ever the accommodating hosts, declined to score.
But in the 8th inning, with 2 outs, the Cards mounted a rally. Rasmus ripped a ground ball double down the 1B line. The Astros elected to IBB Pujols, which seemed to upset Norris a little bit. Whatever the reason, he wound up giving up a gigantic crank-ball to Holliday for a 5-0 Cards’ lead. That’s unlucky, because he really pitched much better than his overall line will lead people to think.
The bad news continued in the 9th. Schumaker hit a one-out single through the hole, and then Lopez hit a line drive into RF. What happened next is hard to describe. Pence hesitated a moment, then decided to come in, and then decided to dive for the ball. When I was a boy, my family used to go up to the southwestern part of Michigan to visit cousins who owned a wonderful cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan. When the wind was out of the northwest, we would get pretty good waves breaking on a sand bar about 100 yards out into the lake. My brother and I would go out there and try to catch those waves and body surf into the shore. One particularly good day he and I caught a good wave and surfed our way in. I got in first and turned back to watch him, but he was unlucky enough to get caught up in the wave as it broke just before the shore. All I saw were arms and legs flying in different directions, and I after I determined that he was ok I decided it was one of the most hilarious things I had ever seen. That’s pretty much what Pence looked like as he tried to make the catch. Naturally, he failed, and the ball went to the fence for a double, scoring Schumaker. One out and one pitcher later, Pujols came up and finished the story, clobbering a Conoco Pump shot off of Daigle to produce the final 8-0 score.
So it’s yet another shutout for the Astros, and yet another submission hold for Wainwright, who is now something like 9-1 against the Astros (we’re beginning to get the idea of what the Reds feel like when Roy takes the hill). On the other hand, Norris actually did pretty well, and there’s hope for the future. This season isn’t going anywhere, so we’ll take our encouragement where we can.