April 20, 1964
St. Louis Cardinals 4-2
At
Houston Colt 45’s 2-3
“Ugh, I don’t want to write about this game.” – Me
The game 7 lineup:
- Curt Flood CF
- Dick Groat SS
- Johnny Lewis RF
- Bill White 1B
- Ken Boyer 3B
- Doug Clemens LF
- Tim McCarver C
- Julian Javier 2B
- Ray Sadecki P
This is one of those games folks. You get 1 or 2 of them during the season.
- You come in with confidence because you’re playing a bad team
- Your starter gets blown out of the water, immediately
- Your hitters never do anything exciting anyway
- You just wasted several hours of your life.
Well imagine wasting several hours of your life researching a game like this 60 years later!
Look I found a picture:
That, friends, is a TERRIBLE quality picture of Ken Boyer have a successful double play turned over him. It took me a LONG TIME to find this picture. Am I upset it’s awful quality? Do I want to have a clearer picture of the Cardinals having a double play turned against them? These are the debates that wage war in my head.
But at least I found a picture. 7 for 7 so far.
As for the game, Ray Sadecki managed to last 1.2 innings. He gave up 4 runs on 6 hits. He also did a classic bad game move where, with the bases load and nobody out, he was facing light hitting catcher/tortoise John Bateman. Bateman played 10 years in the majors. In that time he stole 10 bases, and he was caught 10 times. Bateman hit a slow roller to the right side, just out of reach of Bill White. Julian Javier scooped it up, only to find that 1B was totally vacant. Sadecki never covered. Bateman lumbered over, free from the fear of predators. Several newspaper accounts say that by the time he got there, first base had turned into a Spirit Halloween shop.
That was how Houston scored it’s first run. A Nellie Fox 2 run single and a Pete Runnels RBI single followed, ending Ray Sadecki’s evening – “Nothing went right” he said – and briefly ending his run as a starter. Sadecki, who would be one of the major bright spots by the end of the year, wouldn’t get another start for over two weeks.
Of course, there are worse fates. He was relieved by Harry Fanok, and by the time Ray Sadecki would get his 2nd start of the season, Harry Fanok had pitched his last MLB game.
It isn’t entirely difficult to see why. He pitched 3.1 innings in this one, giving up 3 runs, and again – this was to a terrible team in a pitcher’s park.
In the bottom of the 4th, with 2 men on, 36 year old Nellie Fox hit a two run triple to give him 4 RBI on the day. Perhaps just to give a courtesy to the aging future Hall of Famer, Fanok then uncorked a wild pitch to allow him to score.
The Texas papers then proceeded to fawn over the genius of Houston trading for Nellie Fox. Giant headlines appeared explaining that Nellie Fox was teaching this Houston team how to win.
I won’t bother to say much more about the parallels to the 2024 Cardinals team, except to say that if you don’t note the parallels, you should.
Narratives, man, narratives. Baseball is filled with constant, unending narratives that people buy hook, line, and sinker without ever once asking for any evidence that they might be true.
You’re being told right now that the Cardinals schedule to start the season was REALLY TOUGH.
Well, as for opponents winning % the rest of the way? The Cardinals have the 2nd hardest schedule left to play.
So you see, they had a super tough few weeks, and they have a super tough rest of the season, and it’s like they just play in a different LEAGUE then all of the rest of these teams.
But I digress.
Let me tell you about how much winning Nellie Fox ended up teaching those Colt 45’s.
In 1963 Houston finished 66-96.
Then they got Nellie Fox.
In 1964 Houston finished 66-96.
Nellie stuck around for one more season.
In 1965 Houston finished 65-97.
Sometimes I do think that people would have a more realistic idea of what’s going on with their team by only watching a game on mute, and getting all of their news from a transaction log.
In the meanwhile, the bats did absolutely nothing. They managed 4 hits in the game off of Turk Farrell, who to be fair, was a pretty decent starter.
Dick Groat hit 2 singles, Bill White hit a single, and in the 9th inning, already down by 7, Ken Boyer homered to make it 7-1 Yay.
After the game Johnny Keane commented on the 4-3 start to the season by saying he’d take it. “The hitting has been light, but…we haven’t seen a bad pitcher against us yet.”
I won’t bother to say much more about the parallels to the 2024 Cardinals team, oh wait. I already said this once.
Now look, Personally I want as many possible parallels to the 1964 team as possible. That would be SWELL. But also, I can promise you the Cardinals had faced bad pitchers that year. The team simply had gaping holes in their lineup early in the season. And Keane decided to bat those gaping holes in the MIDDLE of the lineup.
Later on the Cardinals would get Brock, and they would let Mike Shannon do something other than collect splinters on his butt, and the Cardinals would basically end up with the best offense in the National League (which was definitely a pitcher’s league). But early in the season? It was bad.
Of course it wasn’t just bad for them. To have a year like 1964, the butterfly effect has to go just right. And it would.
The Yankees had a new Manager by the name of Yogi Berra. They opened the season – a year after being swept out of the World Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers, with an 0-3 record.
Now that’s nothing. Nothing. It’s 3 games, from a team that just went to the series!
It was their worst start since 1930. Wow.
After the Yankees won their 1st game, Yogi Berra appeared in papers holding up one finger, symbolizing his first win.
The next day, they’d fall to 1-4.
Already there was an issue in New York. By the end of the season two things would happen. 1. They Yankees would make the World Series again. 2. The Yankees would be plotting to replace Yogi Berra.
And what manager would they be seeking to replace him? Well that’s story is just too weird to believe with how the season went on.
In the meantime, The Dodgers, last year’s World Champs, were the team to beat in the NL.
The Dodgers would win 99 games in 1963, and sweep the World Series.
The Dodgers would win 97 games in 1965 and win the World Series.
What happened in 1964? I really can’t put my finger on it. Thank God for random sequencing.
After Koufax won opening day, shutting out St. Louis, the Dodgers would drop 6 straight. The baseball world was going crazy.
This would seem like a great time to face them.
And here’s where I tell you that the Cardinals would play the Dodger’s next!
Except on the mound: Sandy Koufax
Let me throw one other nugget in there. After the game, Johnny Keane said that Sadecki had “much better control than he did in Florida” – referencing their frustration with him in Spring Training.
I love this so much. I love watching a guy get knocked out by a terrible team, and having his manager be like “Actually, this is the GOOD version of him”
Keane, if nothing else, had quite a way with words.