By Rob Rains
There is at least one fact which JJ Wetherholt needs to understand after playing one game in the major leagues.
No matter how many games he ends up playing in his career, there won’t be many, if any, like when he made his major-league debut for the Cardinals in Thursday’s opening day 9-7 win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Busch Stadium.
There will be more games that feature a Wetherholt home run, and a curtain call. There will be games when Nathan Church goes over the wall to rob an opponent of a home run on a day when he had three hits and two RBIs. There will be days when Alec Burleson homers and makes a diving catch of a line drive.
But it’s what happened in the sixth inning that set this game apart from all of the games that could come in the future.
It had been a calm 1-1 game through five innings, with the Cardinals’ run coming on Wetherholt’s homer, a 425-foot shot to center field, in his second at-bat.
But then he had to stand at second base and watch the Rays score six runs in the top of the sixth, sending 11 batters to the plate, getting seven hits, all singles, plus a walk and a sacrifice fly.
Undaunted, the Cardinals’ first six hitters in the bottom of the sixth delivered a single, double, single, double, single and another single. Then Victor Scott II beat out a bunt to load the bases and bring Wetherholt to the plate.
His sacrifice fly made it a one-run game, another sacrifice fly from Ivan Herrera tied it – and Burleson’s bomb capped the biggest opening day inning for the Cardinals in 20 years.
The fact that the eight-run inning came in the bottom of an inning in which they gave up six runs was what everybody was talking about after the game, including Wetherholt.
“That was fun,” Wetherholt said. “I was sitting down (after the top of the inning) and I was like, ‘Damn, we just got punched in the face.’ I thought we weren’t in the best spot and the boys just started getting it going, getting it going, getting it going, and I was able to contribute a little bit.”
The inning featured a combined 22 batters, 15 hits on 84 pitches and lasted 51 minutes. The eight runs were the most scored by the Cardinals in an inning on opening day since they scored eight in the fourth inning in the 2006 opener at Philadelphia.
“It was so much fun,” Wetherholt said.
According to the Cardinals’ public relations staff, it was the first time two teams each scored six or more runs in the same inning on opening day since 1937 in a game between the White Sox and St. Louis Browns.
Ryne Stanek, the oldest Cardinal at 34, and Ramon Urias, the senior Cardinal in terms of games played in the majors with 541, each said they had not seen many games like this one.
“I don’t remember being in an opening day like this,” Urias said. “It was really fun.”
Said Stanek, who got the save by getting a game-ending strikeout with the bases loaded, “Back to back six spots in an inning is pretty crazy. It can’t have happened very often. It was a great game.”
Burleson’s homer was part of what made it special.
“We’re going to continue to play this way, whether we win or lose we are going to play hard,” Burleson said. “We’re going to fight to the end. That’s the style of baseball we want to play.
“I don’t think there was any kind of lull, we knew we just had to get back to it. I don’t think anybody thought we were going to do it in one inning, just had to chip away and obviously it turned into something bigger.”
Matthew Liberatore had come out of the game after five innings in his first opening-day start. He was standing in the video room with Andre Pallante when the rally began in the bottom of the sixth.
“We started scoring so obviously you can’t move,” he said. “You saw our guys not roll over there. That’s the biggest thing, immediately throw a punch back. It’s the first game of the season but I think that the’s brand of baseball we want to play all year.
“We’ll have our wins where we shut the other team out and breeze through nine innings but I think games like that are going to be the deciding factor in whether we’re able to have a good season. To see us throwing punches back like that in game one is really impressive.”
Wetherholt’s home run brought back personal memories of when he hit a home run in his first game in college as a freshman at West Virginia. It was a bigger stage, but his first game in college was a big moment too.
This homer marked the first time a Cardinal homered in his major-league debut, on opening day, since Bobby Smith in 1957.
About the only thing that didn’t go Wetherholt’s way was that he didn’t get a picture with a Clydesdale before the game.
“He’s special,” Liberatore said. “I think you guys are just seeing the tip of the iceberg with him. He’s really a good personality, he wants to learn, he’s hungry to go play. His bat is definitely going to be special.
“That’s a heck of a way to start it.”
Photo by The Associated Press
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