After bad hop, he bounces back

Tony Womack has his winter planned. The Cardinals second baseman will not only rest following a long season, he will heal.

During Game 1 of the World Series Saturday night, Womack was struck in the collarbone by a hard-hit, short-hop ball off the bat of David Ortiz in the seventh inning, a blow that put the Red Sox ahead, 9-7. Womack left the game when the inning ended.

But Womack took the hop and the injury in stride.

"That happens. That's baseball," said Womack, who went 1 for 4 in last night's 6-2 Cardinals loss. "We had the plate, and if [Ortiz] doesn't hit the ball hard we had to try to [get] the guy [Orlando Cabrera] at the plate. If not, we turn two. Just unfortunate it got a bad hop. That's how the ball bounces, off my collarbone and everything."

On top of everything, Womack has been battling back spasms and has found little comfort. "I've done everything," he said. "I try to forget they are there and I try to play and do the best I can."

Womack said he will endure the pain that has hampered him at the plate -- he's been moved from leadoff to seventh in the batting order. "My goal is to play," he said. "I know I'm batting seventh because of the spasms. But I still prepare like I'm leading off.

"Depending on the situation, I change my mind-set or change my game plan," he said. "But for the most part, [being moved from leadoff to seventh] doesn't bother me. It just makes me stay by the heater a little longer. I'm playing.

"After it's all said and done, I've got all winter to heal. There's not many chances you get to play in the World Series, so I'm not going to let this slow me down."

Womack struggled at the plate through the early part of the National League Championship Series against Houston, but in Game 6, he went 2 for 2 with a run, his last game as the leadoff batter, although he was removed after three innings with back spasms. He earned a name for himself with clutch hits in the 2001 postseason for the champion Arizona Diamondbacks, going 2 for 5 with an RBI in a thrilling Game 7 comeback against the Yankees in the World Series.

But that seems a distant memory. "I felt like I had been hit by a truck twice over [yesterday] morning," said Womack. "I was really stiff. They compare it to having a stinger in football. The biggest thing is that it really hurt when I got hit, I kind of lost feeling in my fingers and my arm. That didn't feel too good. It just got one of those nerves, that one near your collarbone that pushes up against the bone, and I lost feeling for a while, like 5 or 10 minutes."

But Womack, who participated in spring training for the Red Sox (he was dealt to St. Louis March 21 for minor league pitcher Matt Duff), said he will endure the pain and raw conditions at Fenway Park. "When you're playing in the World Series, I don't think there's anything tough," he said. "That's the difference in, I guess, me and other people.

"Being in a situation where you start out with 30 teams and you're one of the two teams, you kind of forget what you can control and what you cannot control."