best inning ever

Alright, if the media isn’t going to talk about it, I am. For all those who missed the eighth inning of last night’s St. Louis at Oakland game, I pity you. It was by far the best inning of the evening by a Cardinals pitcher and it just happened to not be pitched by a pitcher. Who was the “pitcher”? Hint: it was a guy often stationed around third base, but it wasn’t The Secret Weapon. Instead, it was his modern-day supersub counterpart: Scott Spiezio. Hooray!

I had gathered my personal effects in the top of the 8th expecting to leave my friend’s house in time to avoid seeing the birdie bullpen continue to bleed runs in the bottom of the 8th. Under any other circumstances I would have stayed until the last out in the game had been recorded, but seeing as I had been watching the game with a friend who was tiring and had to wake up early to drive for a weekend away, I decided to be a polite guest and leave so he could go to sleep.

Thankfully, I glanced over at the tv to see a shot of a gleeful #26 throwing a few pitches on a bullpen mound. At first I thought he was playing around. Nope. The promise of Speezer pitching prompted me to plop back on the couch and see the best inning all night by a Cardinals pitcher.

• To start off, Speeze retired Bobby Crosby on a ground ball that touched his glove and continued back to Kennedy. Leadoff hitter = not a problem for Spiezio. Good sign.
• Lefty Dan Johnson walked on five pitches — two balls inside, two way outside, and one strike inside) but was rendered moot with some defensive backup on the next two batters.
• I don’t believe I have ever seen Taguchi sprint faster than he did when running down Mark Ellis’ foul ball down in the third base bullpen. It kind of reminded me of the way Mario runs when you push all sorts of crazy buttons to make him run faster (or at least make yourself think Mario is running faster).
• Jack Cust flied out to Juan in right and I think we can all agree that no amount of legging out hits and not grounding into double plays would have made up for letting that fly ball fall for a hit with Spiezio up there prepared to totally embarrass himself and take one for the team.

For me, the best part of this was not that one of our pitchers finally had some success but that someone looked like they were enjoying the game. He was clearly uncomfortable out there what with all the looks back to the middle infielders that screamed “Aren’t you going to come visit me sometime?” and checks to make sure the defense was still standing up out there, but you could tell he was excited to go in and when he was done, proud that he had managed to pull that one off. Unfortunately, no pictures have surfaced so unless you managed to see it last night you might be out of luck.

[Update 6/17/07: Nick Normal just made my day by drawing his posted video of the inning to my attention. Enjoy, folks.]

Kip Wells Thought of the Day: Kip has a significant history of injuries, both freak and not. He also has a history of not being a good pitcher. What are the chances that his injuries are due to a fan movement to get him off the mound? Remember the broken foot? I bet someone stepped on him with steel toed boots at the grocery store and he managed to injure it further in the game. The clogged artery? Some grandma adopted a long-term strategy and gave him some buttered up cookies.