For manager, already a moving experience
Why did the Cardinals move up expected Game 3 starter Matt Morris to tonight? Because he had thrown only 80 pitches in his last start, seemed a good bet on three days' rest, and has plenty of road postseason experience.
"We had an edge and we decided to play it," said manager Tony La Russa.The move allows the Cardinals to use Jason Marquis (.292), who's a much better hitter than Morris (.161) at home, where pitchers will bat. Then Morris can pitch again at Fenway.
Womack OK
Second baseman Tony Womack, who left the game in the seventh inning after taking a nasty David Ortiz grounder off his left collarbone, should be back in the lineup tonight. "I'll be ready," said Womack, after X-rays came back negative. "I lost feeling in my arm. That's why I left. I had no feeling in my fingers." Womack said he had no idea why the ball played the way it did. "I don't know what it hit," he said. "One of those bad hops, I guess."
So-so move
How come So Taguchi was playing left field instead of Reggie Sanders? "Mostly because I'm trying to sell those 2,000-win things [his career managing victories] in Japan, trying to get them really excited and happy with me. I'm serious," said La Russa. Actually, La Russa said he wanted another righthanded bat in the lineup against Tim Wakefield (Sanders was the designated hitter) and felt that Taguchi's 10 years with the Orix Blue Wave made him a clutch player. "You could see it, whether he's pinch hit or played late, he was never in awe of a tight situation in the big leagues," La Russa said. Taguchi went 1 for 3 with a single and scored a run in the sixth before giving way to Roger Cedeno.
A bad stretch
St. Louis extended its losing streak in Series games on the road to seven games. Its last victory came in Game 2 of the 1985 Series at Kansas City. The Cardinals also dropped all three games at Houston in the NCLS. Their record in Series openers, once abysmal (1-8), now stands at 5-11 . . . If the Cardinals want to match Boston's bashers, their bats are going to have to heat up. Coming into the Series, only Albert Pujols had a higher batting average during the playoffs (.442) than he did during the regular season (.331). Scott Rolen (.314) was hitting .220, Womack (.307) was hitting .222, Jim Edmonds (.301) was hitting .282. John Mabry had gone from .296 to .143, Edgar Renteria from .287 to .257, Larry Walker from .280 to .273, Sanders from .260 to .229, and Mike Matheny from .247 to .182. Last night, Walker was 4 for 5 with two doubles and a homer, but Pujols was 0 for 3, Rolen 0 for 5, and Edmonds 1 for 4.
Testing time?
Will the Cardinals bunt tonight to test Curt Schilling's sewn-together right ankle? Absolutely, if the Boston fielders play back. That's their standard operating procedure. "We're just going to play that way," says La Russa. "If somebody backs up, I don't care if you have the best fielder on the mound, we try to bunt on him. You take the bunt away, we swing. The sacrifice is there, we sacrifice. But we are not going to try to run Schilling around, because we are just going to run ourselves into outs." . . . Though only three members of this club (Woody Williams, Ray Lankford, Walker) were alive when St. Louis won the 1967 Series here, the Cardinals are no strangers to Fenway's odd angles -- they beat the Sox two out of three in June 2003, their only regular-season appearance. "I think it's a little something," figures La Russa. As soon as they stepped on the field for Friday's under-the-lights workout, three players headed straight for the Wall, where they opened the scoreboard door and ventured in for a look. Fenway hasn't been a bad venue for St. Louis over the years -- the Redbirds are 5-5 here all-time. They won one of three (a 12-3 thumping of Tex Hughson) in the 1946 Series and two of four (including the 7-2 clincher) in the 1967 Series. "It's a neat environment," said La Russa. "Fans are very close to the field. The players, you feel their presence. A lot of passion, a lot of knowledge about the game."
Leaders in their field
The Red Sox shouldn't count on their guests to boot the ball around the diamond. Until Renteria's eighth-inning error last night, the Cardinals had made only one error during the postseason, when an Edmonds throw bounced into the Astros dugout in Game 7. Until then, their 12 straight flawless playoff games were a major league record.
