Cards barnstorming their way through 2020
This is just some of the amazing math about the current St. Louis Cardinals, who look like some barnstorming team out of baseball’s past, described by Benjamin Hochman, the fine columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“Seventeen missed days, 18 positive tests of COVID-19 for players and staffers.”
Before the Cardinals rejoined the season over the weekend, their record was 2-3. Going into Tuesday’s games, they are now 5-5. They played a doubleheader last Saturday. They played a doubleheader on Monday against the Cubs. They will play another doubleheader against the Cubs, one of the best teams in baseball so far, on Wednesday.
And it gets crazier than that, for proud players and a proud team and franchise playing in a baseball city as great as we have, once they make it into September, trying to get as close as possible to 60 games by the time the regular season ends on Sept. 27.
Starting Sept. 4, they are scheduled to play six doubleheaders in 15 days, including five games in four days against the Cubs. Then they'll go home to St. Louis for a doubleheader against the Twins. They will mercifully get a day off before yet another doubleheader against the Tigers. And then looking ahead to the last week of the regular season, if baseball makes it that far, the Cardinals will have one last doubleheader -- for now -- against the Brewers.
(Thankfully for St. Louis, doubleheaders feature seven-inning games in 2020.)
If the Cardinals somehow make it out of the National League Central and become one of the 16 teams to make it to the 2020 postseason, no team in modern baseball history will have overcome more on the road to October. There have been so many stories about the Cardinals, who have won more World Series in their own history than anybody except the Yankees.
There has never been a baseball story like this in St. Louis.
Right now the schedule has them playing 32 games in September. Starting Tuesday, they have 16 games scheduled for the rest of August. Here is what Adam Wainwright, a star Cardinal for a long time, said when the Cardinals were finally back on the field again:
“I don’t think we have any idea what this is going to be like. We can plan on stuff, but nobody’s ever done what we’re fixin’ to have to do.”
And here is what Matt Carpenter, part of the heart and soul of the team the way Yadier Molina (one of the Cardinals who tested positive for COVID-19 and has yet to rejoin the season) and Wainwright have been, said the other day in a pregame Zoom media conference about the Cardinals’ journey just to get this far:
“If we do make the playoffs, I think it would be an amazing story of perseverance, grit and nothing short of a miracle, to be honest.
“We’re basically playing like we have nothing to lose, because we really don’t. I mean, not a lot of people expect a lot out of us, given the circumstances and what we’ve been through. The layoff, we’ve got guys on our roster that we’re usually counting on that aren’t here with us. So nobody’s expecting anything out of us, and sometimes that’s a good place to be in mentally, when you don’t have any expectations, and you can just go out there and play.
“You get to a place where you just go out and just see what happens. I mean really, that’s all you can do, just given the circumstances. I’m looking at that as a positive. Play as hard as we can. Whatever happens, happens. And really don’t feel too bad about it, one way or the other.”
He is a Cardinal. You would expect him to think that way.
Carpenter’s words remind me of something that Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, said before the Major League Baseball season resumed at the end of July.
“If you opt in,” Cashman said, “you have to be all in.”
And that is the St. Louis Cardinals right now. They have only played 10 games. They still don’t have Molina. They don’t have Paul DeJong, another of their All-Stars, who also was placed on the COVID-19 injured list. Austin Gomber, who starts the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Cubs, was on the COVID-19 injured list because of contact tracing. Jack Flaherty, scheduled to get the ball in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, hasn’t pitched for his team since Opening Day on July 24.
Of course there are challenges for every team in the sport this year. Just not like the challenges the Cardinals have faced, are facing, will continue to face the rest of the way. And remember something about the Cardinals: Ten months ago they were in the National League Championship Series against the Nationals, having fought their way through a tremendous five-game NL Division Series against the Braves. They had made it to the sport’s final four. Now, in a crazy short season, they have played 10 games and won five in four weeks.
They are the barnstorming baseball team from St. Louis, even renting 41 cars last weekend to get to Chicago. New players being added all the time. Waiting for Molina and DeJong and hoping that the worst of it with COVID-19 is over for the ’20 Cardinals. You know who America’s Team is right now?
Them.