DOWNTOWN — The last time the Pittsburgh Pirates faced Joel Pineiro they had a hard enough time getting past his inner hockey goalie, let alone another in the righthander’s run of undefeated starts against the Bucs.

Pineiro, who freely admits he’s prone to soccer-kicking at a grounders coming back to the mound, made what was, at that time, the defensive play of the season with a kick save that rainbowed right back to him and became a groundout.

But did Pineiro’s feet make that play the feat of the first quarter?

For your consideration, here are three astonishing moments from the first 40 games of the regular season — two you definitely saw and read about and a third you definitely didn’t see and may not yet have heard about. (Hence, the reason it is the only one of the three feats not have a video clip with it.)

See if you can figure out which one of these events, according to a player on the team, left a Cardinals coach saying:

“I wouldn’t believe it could happen unless I saw it myself. Now that I’ve seen it, I guess I have to believe it even though I really cannot believe what I just saw happen.”

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1. Joel Pineiro’s Kick Save: In the sixth inning of Pineiro’s start on April 24 at PNC Park, Pirates infielder Freddy Sanchez scorched a groundball back to the mound. With his follow-through taking him away from the ball, Pineiro flicked his left leg (his back leg!) at the ball and sent a ricochet straight up into the air. As the ball dropped back down, Pineiro caught it in the air, wheeled and fired to first for the out. Better to see it than read about it:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/UIAEt39anxI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

2. Rick Ankiel’s Uncanny Cannon: Again, another see-it, not-read-it event. In Colorado last week, Ankiel rifled two throws from center field to nail runners at third base for the final outs of two innings. The first one was a double play that pegged Willy Taveras (then the stolen base leader in the National League) trying to tag-up and get to third. The second was even more impressive. Stepping off the warning track as he threw, Ankiel toasted Omar Quintanilla as he attempted to stretch a shot to the left-center wall for a triple. Both throws got to third on the fly, and one estimate — Larry Walker’s – had the ball traveling in the mid-90s mph.

 [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Qj1haIqmqaE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

“That’s just freakish,” second baseman Aaron Miles said of the throws. At Coors Field the day after Ankiel’s throws, Miles and a handful of others discussed the few truly astonishing plays the Cardinals have seen this season. And that was when they started describing …

3. Albert Pujols’ Fungo Homers: Before a game in the first trip to Milwaukee — and the team and a few reporters, including Matthew Leach, were there to see it — Pujols was asked if he could hit the massive scoreboard out in center field. The catch: He had to fungo the ball out there. Meaning, he had to stand near home plate, toss the ball to himself and jack the ball out of the ballpark. There was a history here. Before a home game last season, Pujols stood near home plate at Busch Stadium. With Jim Edmonds encouraging him, Pujols tossed a ball up and launched a shot to left field. As coach Hal McRae said, the ball didn’t land in Big Mac Land (the second deck of Busch), but the deck “above that one.”

“I didn’t believe it,” McRae said. “That wasn’t because you hadn’t seen anybody do it , but because you didn’t think anybody could do it. Not just tossing it to himself.”

So in Milwaukee, earlier this season, a teammate asked Pujols if he could hit the backdrop with a fungo shot. Pujols tossed the ball up and hammered a shot — a low liner that hit the scoreboard in center. He tried it again. Tossed the ball up and swung …

The ball hit the video board, above the scoreboard, in deep center field at Miller Park.

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