Why a first trip to St. Louis is special to Peña

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña had never stepped foot in St. Louis prior to the team’s arrival for a three-game series against the Cardinals earlier this week. But the trip was sort of a full-circle moment for the Peña family. Peña’s father, Geronimo, played six of his seven big league seasons with the Cardinals, and Jeremy would wear one of his dad’s No. 21 Cardinals jerseys when he was in high school.

When Peña arrived at Busch Stadium prior to Tuesday’s series opener, it didn’t take long for him to be reminded of his father’s playing days in St. Louis, which came before he was born.

“The first thing that happened to me when I walked in, the clubbie came up to me and he was talking to me about my dad,” Peña said. “That’s pretty cool, because I never really had a connection to people that played with my father until last year.”

Geronimo Peña was a reserve second baseman for the Cardinals from 1990-95, finishing his career in 1996 with five games with Cleveland. He played alongside Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith in the final few years of Smith’s career, posting an .863 OPS in 1992 and .823 in 1994. He never appeared in the playoffs, so Jeremy got bragging rights as a rookie when he was named MVP of both the ALCS and World Series while helping Houston win the World Series last year.

“Not only is he a good baseball player, but he’s turned out to be a very well-versed young man,” Smith said. “He’s got good genes, and you knew with the way his father played, some kid from our generation was probably going to come up and do well like Ken Griffey [Jr.] did with his dad, and it’s nice to see a father-son combination have successful big league careers.”

Clips of Peña’s big moments in the postseason are easy to find on the internet. But finding video highlights of Geronimo's career with the Cardinals? Well, that takes some research.

“It’s tough to find video from back then if you weren’t Barry Bonds,” Jeremy said. “My older brother, he found a full game where one of his teammates [Mark Whiten] hit four homers, so they posted the whole game [online] and my dad happened to be playing that game, so we watched the whole game. That was my first time seeing him play. We found a couple of other games against the Reds where he hit a home run, a couple of other games he got a couple of knocks.”

In the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 7, 1993, against the Reds, Whiten whacked four home runs. In fact, it was a smiling Geronimo Peña – who went 1-for-3 with walk and a run scored – who physically pushed Whiten back onto the field from the dugout following his fourth homer to acknowledge the cheers from the crowd at Riverfront Stadium.

And what similarities did Jeremy see when watching pops?

“I feel like we both had ugly jogs,” he joked. “He was a big dude, bigger frame than I am. I learned the game through him.”

Peña and his dad are extremely close and still discuss baseball often – and St. Louis still comes up in conversation.

“I know he loved it here, so now I’m going to go check out a couple of different spots and ask him for spots that he went to when he was playing here and see if they’re still open and go check them out,” Jeremy said.