ARLINGTON, Texas • Monday night at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, the Cardinals somehow lost World Series Game 5 to Texas. The score was 4-2, and no, I don't believe what I just saw and heard.
Positioned with an outstanding chance to take a 3-2 series lead, the Cardinals played one of their worst and most incompetent games of the season.
And Tony La Russa managed one of his worst, and strangest, games of the year.
Really, the last thing I thought we'd see in this carnival-midway stadium was a smart, powerful, road-tested St. Louis lineup put in two consecutive worthless evenings. I didn't think we'd see the Cardinals succumb to pressure and confusion and spiral straight into a meltdown mode.
I didn't think we'd see La Russa and the bullpen have a ridiculous, inexcusable miscommunication that led to TLR being forced to stick with lefty reliever Marc Rzepczynski to face the Rangers' slugger Mike Napoli, who clubbed the game-winning, two-run double in the eighth inning.
Full disclosure: My brain is fried from trying to comprehend the events of Monday night. This must be why old-school sportswriters used to sip whiskey in the press box. This is too bizarre to absorb and understand on a tight deadline. Game 5 came down to phone calls? Really? And how do we possibly explain this? What do I look like, a Verizon salesman?
According to La Russa, he called the bullpen with orders to warm up Jason Motte and Rzepczynski. La Russa might as well have made a long-distance call to China, because the message got garbled and didn't make it through. Somehow, in the middle of all of this, Lance Lynn began loosening up even though the entire team knew that the plan was to give Lynn one more day of rest after he'd thrown 47 pitches in Game 3. La Russa attributed the problem to the very loud stadium noise.
"They heard ‘Rzepczynski' and they didn't hear ‘Motte,' and when I looked up there, Motte wasn't going," La Russa said. "(Later) I called back and said ‘Motte,' and they heard ‘Lynn.' So I went out there, wrong guy. (Lynn) is not going to pitch today. ... That's why - it must be loud. I give the fans credit."
Rzep heated up, but Motte sat.
That left Rzepczynski to deal with Napoli.
Result: Boom! Ballgame.
La Russa said he called later, asking for Motte, only to have bullpen coaches Derek Lilliquist and Jeff Murphy get Lynn ready instead. Again, the excuse was crowd noise. What the heck was going on out there near the bullpen, an AC-DC concert?
And even if crowd noise was a factor, how does anyone get 'Rzepczynski' confused with 'Motte' or 'Lynn' mixed up with 'Motte.' Do any of those names sound alike to you? Here's an idea: Whitey Herzog does those hearing-aid commercials; please have him send a few units to the Cardinals bullpen.
After Rzep gave up the double to Napoli, imagine La Russa's shock when he signaled for a pitching change two batters later, only to see Lynn walking in to pitch to leadoff man Ian Kinsler. By this time La Russa must have thought he'd used up all of his minutes on his phone plan.
"I thought it was Motte, and they were yelling at me as I went out," La Russa said. "I didn't hear them. It wasn't Motte. So I saw Lynn. I went, ‘Oh, what are you doing here?' "
Lynn was told to lob four pitches to intentionally walk Kinsler. Motte was finally and belatedly summoned to take care of No. 2 hitter Elvis Andrus.
I guess the phone call went through this time. Hey, maybe they should install one of those automated-voice systems on the bullpen phone.
"For Marc Rzepczynski, Press 1."
"For Jason Motte, Press 2."
"For Octavio Dotel, Press 3."
"For Arthur Rhodes, Press 4."
And so on ...
This is craziness, no?
You knew there was a problem when Ryan Franklin strolled in from the pen in the eighth.
The Cardinals once won a World Series behind an amazing pitching performance by Grover Cleveland Alexander.
Now they may lose a World Series game because they don't know how to use Alexander Graham Bell's invention?
How about sending a text message next time?
None of this makes much sense, so who really knows what happened?
I was, however, surprised when the pizza-delivery man showed up on the pitcher's mound with a large pepperoni (extra cheese) in the bottom of the eighth.
While the Cardinals were doing their Abbott and Costello routine, the Rangers were staying calm, winning Game 5, and seizing control of the best-of-seven series.
But there was more to this than Bullpen-phone-gate.
I didn't think we'd see La Russa twice take the bat out of Albert Pujols' hands by ordering sacrifice bunts in front of him. Not that the Rangers were going to give Pujols anything to hit anyway -- preferring to take their chances with Matt Holliday -- but Texas manager Ron Washington undoubtedly is appreciative.
I didn't think we'd see two botched plays that led to a non-sprinter, Allen Craig, getting thrown out at second base by the length of a coast line, with Pujols at bat. According to La Russa, the first was a hit-and-run, and the second was a run-and-hit. The result, however, was the same: bad.
I didn't know that Pujols is making strategy decisions in crucial situations. Pujols called the seventh-inning hit-and-run on his own. Maybe the Cardinals can convince Pujols to stay by offering him the job of player-manager.
(Update: In a phone conversation La Russa told me that he has, for many years, empowered select players to make decisions on their own, based on their feel for the game situation. Pujols is one; La Russa mentioned Edgar Renteria as another.)
I didn't like the intentional walk to Nelson Cruz in the eighth, not with Octavio Dotel pitching. The IBB just moved the Cardinals close to a confrontation with Naopli, who is pounding them in the series, with nine RBIs.
OK, while it's easy to dump everything on La Russa, it says here that the Cardnals' hitters lost this one. Even with the bizarre decisions and phone-call follies, the Cardinals should have won Game 5.
They scored 16 runs in nine innings in Game 3. They've followed up with two runs, total, in 18 innings in Games 4 and 5.
It's unfathomable, really, to see the Cardinals self-destruct so dramatically. They gagged in Game 5, wasting a strong performance by starting pitcher Chris Carpenter, who went seven strong innings, allowing only solo homers on mistake pitches to Mitch Moreland and Adrian Beltre. It shouldn't have mattered. The homers would have been meaningless had the Cardinals blown Game 5 wide open.
The Cardinals put so many runners on base in Game 5, I thought someone would set up a toll booth at second base to aid the Texas economy. But after scoring two runs in the second, the Cardinals went poof.
It's a shame to see the Cardinals do this to themselves after rallying with such admirable tenacity to save the season.
This became a different team on Aug. 25.
Now the Cardinals are looking like the Aug. 24 version.
After winning the first game of the World Series, the Cardinals let the Rangers escape in Game 2. After beating up the Rangers with a 16-7 smackdown in Game 3, the Cardinals allowed the Rangers to recover for two consecutive wins.
Overall the Cardinals sent 41 hitters to the box to take at-bats in Game 5. They received nine walks, a hit batsmen, and put 17 men on base. They could only scrounge for two runs, and we didn't think that was mathematically possible.
Cleanup hitter Holliday twice came up empty in crucial situations that could have won Game 5 for St. Louis. He's having a brutal World Series, with three hits in 18 at-bats (.167), four strikeouts and three ground-out double plays.
"It hurts to let the team down," Holliday said.
Holliday wasn't by himself. David Freese stranded five runners overall in Game 5. There were misses by just about everyone as the Cardinals went one for 12 with runners in scoring position.
Had the Cardinals' hitters done even a remotely respectable job, the lead would have been so enormous, the bullpen could have hung up on La Russa or prank-dialed him in the dugout.
Game 5 should have ended with a happy flight home, but after all of the screw-ups Monday night, we can't be sure the Cardinals even made it to DFW airport. They might have gotten lost along the way.
The Rangers are in control now. They're delivering the money hits. They have the edge in managing. And they obviously have the better phone plan. With his staggered team suddenly down 3-2, La Russa's next call may be to 911.
