Sept. 9, 1964 - Don’t tell Phillies manager Gene Mauch the Cardinals are coming. Don’t remind him St. Louis is five games back and rumbling through the final two months like a buffalo stampede.
“The only club in the National League that can beat us is the Phillies,” Mauch said tonight. “We did that tonight, and it ain’t gonna happen any more.”
The Cardinals got 20 hits and beat the Phillies, 10-5, tonight in 11 weird innings to snarl to within five games of the lead. It was a big game because the Giants had lost in the afternoon and the Reds had lost at night, and a Phillies’ victory would have meant a seven-game lead.
“They might be peeking back at us,” Cardinal third baseman Ken Boyer suggested after getting three hits and driving in three runs, including the tying run with two out in the ninth inning. “If they win it, they break it open. A seven-game pad would have been tough. Especially the way the schedule is.”
Mauch sneered at Boyer’s suggestion. “If I’m peeking back,” he said after a closed-door club meeting, “and we get one more out in the ninth, then I’m looking back seven lengths in front. Anyway, I’d rather be peeking back than peeking ahead.”
The Phils led 5-3 going into the ninth on the wings of improbable things like chasing Curt Simmons in the fourth inning and a two-out run-scoring double by pitcher Jack Baldschun in the eighth.
“I felt sure we’d win after that,” Baldschun said because the last double he hit was in Nashville four years ago. “I felt sharp, but they got a lot of bloop hits.”
Charlie James singled to start the Cardinal ninth, and then Curt Flood hit a ball up the middle. Tony Taylor caught it near second base, got the force, but lost control of the ball before he could try to double Flood.
Lou Brock, who had five hits, singled to center. When Cookie Rojas bobbled the ball, Brock scampered around first. A quick throw had him trapped, but he blitzed past Danny Cater’s futile tag near first base.
Then Brock stole second. Flood scored as Bill White grounded out, and the Phillies were one strike away from a seven-game lead when Boyer plunked a 1-2 pitch into center field to score Brock with the tying run.
It stayed tied until the 11th, when the Cards scored five runs on a rally instigated by a bloop single by Flood, Brock’s fifth hit, and a double by White.
This is the second annual Cardinal stampede. Last year, they won 19 out of 20 to roar to within one game of the Dodgers. Right now, they’re on a 13-of-16 kick.
“We’ve been playing good ball since June,” said St. Louis manager Johnny Keane. “The first thing was getting Brock. Then we got Barney Schultz, and we brought Mike Shannon up. And we added Mike Cuellar and Gordon Richardson. All of those things made us more formidable.”
“I have to give the credit to Johnny Keane,” said Brock tonight. “He let me run on my own. He said they got me for my speed, and I was on my own. That was the key. He had confidence in my ability.”
“When he came to us,” Keane recalled, “I told him left field was hit and that he figured to be the St. Louis left fielder for a lot of years.”
Brock won’t win any Golden Glove awards and he does reckless things on the bases, but he has the speed to overcome his mistakes.
“I saw daylight between Cater and first base,” he said of tonight’s pivotal play. “I just turned on the steam. Sometimes, if you jog in a rundown and then turn on the steam, you’ll take them by surprise.”
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