{"id":1461,"date":"2009-07-30T13:31:10","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T20:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/30\/game-of-the-year\/"},"modified":"2009-07-30T13:31:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T20:31:10","slug":"game-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/30\/game-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Game of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, as I’m listening to the UCB Radio Hour and visiting sites around the web, I noticed that one of my Facebook friends (and fellow mods at CardsClubhouse<\/a>) said something about this being “the game of the year” in his status.<\/p>\n

And that was before the Cardinals pulled it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Needing a win since the Cubs had already won.\u00c2\u00a0 Tying the game with two outs in the ninth.\u00c2\u00a0 Retying the game in the 11th.\u00c2\u00a0 Throwing out a runner at home in the 12th.\u00c2\u00a0 Winning it in the 15th.\u00c2\u00a0 This game<\/a> had it all and will be a tough one to top for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Hard to narrow it down to just one Hero, but I think I’ll go ahead and give it to Ryan Ludwick<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, he led to the Dodgers only run in regulation, but his single in the ninth led to Colby Rasmus being able to tie the game.\u00c2\u00a0 He tied the game himself in the 11th, then threw out Manny Ramirez at the plate in the 12th.\u00c2\u00a0 All in all, it goes in the credit side of the ledger for him.<\/p>\n

Also good to see Albert Pujols getting an extra base hit.\u00c2\u00a0 With three hits last night, including the game winner, it’s possible that he’s starting to come out of his most recent slump.\u00c2\u00a0 He still had a couple of at-bats that weren’t typical Albert, but if this team is clicking even without him, just imagine when he’s on a tear.<\/p>\n

Gotta love what Joel Pineiro is doing this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Rasmus got him off the hook so he didn’t get an undeserved loss.\u00c2\u00a0 Eight innings of one-run ball should win you a lot of games, but in this one he’s almost a forgotten man.\u00c2\u00a0 Having him line up behind Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright in a playoff series, though, will not be a problem for Cardinal fans like it would have been last year.<\/p>\n

Major kudos to Blake Hawksworth as well, who earned his first major league win with three shutout innings.\u00c2\u00a0 I think a lot of people, even before last night’s outing, were interested to see what he’d do with that fifth slot in the rotation.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night pretty much cemented that impression for me.\u00c2\u00a0 I know that Mitchell Boggs is getting the call for Friday, but if that doesn’t work I’d like to see them think about Hawksworth.<\/p>\n

In such a well-played game, the Goat tag is hard to apply.\u00c2\u00a0 Without the rally, Ludwick probably would have gotten it for misplaying the ball hit by Casey Blake.\u00c2\u00a0 I really wanted to give it to Joe Thurston for missing first base on that “double” in the 12th, but since the Cardinals won it’s basically a footnote.\u00c2\u00a0 So I guess I’ll go with Nick Stavinhoa<\/strong>, who with Yadier Molina were the only starters not to get a hit, but Molina did draw two walks.<\/p>\n

Cards go for the sweep tonight, which would likely send a message to the rest of the league.\u00c2\u00a0 Kyle Lohse goes against Hiroki Kuroda.\u00c2\u00a0 Lohse has had trouble<\/a> with the Dodgers in the past, but so had Pineiro before last night’s outing.\u00c2\u00a0 He’ll really have to try to corral Manny, who has hit two homers and has a .417 average against him.\u00c2\u00a0 Manny’s been held down this series, so you hope you can do it for another night and let him blow up over the weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 Kuroda hasn’t faced the Cardinals<\/a>, so only Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday have seen him.\u00c2\u00a0 Holliday’s liked it, though, hitting .455 with two doubles against him.<\/p>\n

A sweep keeps the Cardinals in first as they welcome in a beat up Houston team.\u00c2\u00a0 The second half surge is ready to go!<\/p>\n

Daniel Shoptaw is the founder of “C70 At The Bat,” where he regularly writes about his beloved St. Louis Cardinals.\u00c2\u00a0 You can find more of his work here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, as I’m listening to the UCB Radio Hour and visiting sites around the web, I noticed that one of my Facebook friends (and fellow mods at CardsClubhouse) said something about this being “the game of the year” in his status. And that was before the Cardinals pulled it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}