DENVER — Even after the game, in the Cardinals clubhouse, there was quiet discussion about which of Rick Ankiel’s two lightning bolts from deep center field to third base were the best.

The first one beat one of the fastest runners in baseball by at least a stride to third base. The second, well, it, Larry Walker joked, traveled further from the outfield than Ankiel’s home run had traveled over the outfield in that same inning. Some of the names dropped in the conversations were grandiose arms such as Bo Jackson and, more than once, Roberto Clemente.

Leave it to Tony La Russa to find a compromise.

What was most incredible about the throws wasn’t anything about them individually, but that he made two of them — in the same game.

“I was pumped,” Ankiel said. “You don’t make throws like that all the time, no matter how many times you practice. For me, it was better than the home run. Those throws just don’t happen all the time.”

But they have happened before for Ankiel.

The throw Ankiel made to beat Willy Taveras to third base Tuesday night reminded me of another throw Ankiel made in the early stages of his reinvention. It was back in 2005, while Ankiel was with Double-A Springfield, and … well, this was the lede I wrote back then:

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It took one start in center field and one dart from that treasured arm for Rick Ankiel to show why he remains one of the most enticing and enigmatic talents the Cardinals have, no matter his position.

Ankiel made his first professional start in center field Sunday, and just two innings into a Class AA game he made a play to help determine the outcome. With runners on second and third, a Corpus Christi hitter lofted a fly ball to center. As Springfield Cardinals manager Chris Maloney tells it, Ankiel had a bead on the ball, shifted naturally when the ball zigged, but instinctively kept his footing so that he’d come at the ball, snare it and be in position to throw.

Ankiel’s bee-line strike arrived at third base a step before runner Charlton Jimerson, who had 39 stolen bases last season in Class AA. The Cardinals won 2-1 in the 10th inning. If Jimerson had reached third and scored, Maloney said, the Cardinals would have lost.

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Video of Ankiel’s throws against the Rockies are available over at MLB.com’s vast highlight collection. They are equally uncanny on third, fourth, seventh viewing. It’s like Ryan Ludwick described as he neared Ankiel on the eighth-inning throw that pegged Omar Quintanilla at third base: As the ball bounced up against the wall, Ludwick knew Ankiel had the better chance to make a play — not that Ludwick believed there was a play to be made. Ludwick started screaming “3! 3! 3!”

“Honestly, I thought he had no shot to throw him out,” Ludwick said later. “Best throw I’ve seen in my life. He just picked it up, turned and fired. And it was right on the money. Can’t make a better throw than that.”

Said Walker: “He was 3-foot-2. That’s how he looked. That’s how far away he was.”

“I saw him rounding for third and thought if I could get off a good, clean throw, you never know what could happen,” Ankiel said. “Maybe he trips.”

The two outfield assists were Ankiel’s fourth and fifth of his career (he had three in 2007). It was the first two-assist game for a Cardinals outfielder since Chris Duncan’s last August in Pittsburgh. Colorado manager Clint Hurdle swatted away a post-game question that wondered if it was bad base-running or incredible throws that led to the two third outs at third base. La Russa agreed that word is already out about Ankiel’s arm — is there a better one in the National League? a better one for a center fielder in the majors? — but that tonight he’d try to take the same bases against Ankiel. He’d test him on both plays. Again. Because what are the chances.

“I don’t believe he did it,” La Russa said. ”One, everybody on our side had never seen anything like it. Two? That just doesn’t happen. Who could believe it?”

Since major-league baseball came to this region — just a few years after Joey Meyer pelted Mile High Stadium with moonshots — the jab at altitude baseball was that the home runs soared here, that the ball carried farther in the thin air. Asked if the same thing goes for throws from center, Ankiel said:

“It might. For me, it was just get off a good throw, give it a shot, and let it eat.”

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