Game Three of the 2013 World Series brought me back to St. Louis, a town where I have seemingly spent more time this past month than in my own home town!
The photo work room from which I’ve based operations out of at Busch Stadium was a bit more crowded than it was when I started covring the Cardinals in the playoffs. As a matter of fact, we had an overflow situation where many of us were set up in the tunnel outside the work room. It is, you know, the WORLD Series!
Ex-White Sox hurler Jake Peavy took the bump for the Red Sox on this cool autumn evening, facing the Cardinals Joe “Last Man Standing” Kelly. My photo position was in the inside first camera well, just to the inside of the Cardinals dugout near home plate. I was hoping that foul balls would avoid me after what I went through in Game Two in Boston.
I figured I might be just a little bit jumpy, and thankfully, the players obliged and nothing came my way, at least this evening.
Peavy worked through a rocky first inning, only giving up two runs when it looked like the Cardinals would blow this one wide open early. I mentioned to Cardinals Team Photographer Scott Rovak that the Cardinals may regret not putting a few more runs up on the board, since I knew Jake pretty well from his time on the Southside and knew if he did indeed have “one bad inning”, he would settle down and pitch well the rest of the way.
Peavy pitched out of a bases loaded jam in the fourth inning, keeping the Red Sox in the game.
The Red Sox narrowed the margin to 2-1 after Xander Bogaerts led off the fifth inning with a triple and scored on a fielders choice.
The Red Sox finally forced a pitching change, and it paid off when Daniel “I ain’t Nava heard of ya” Nava singled to score Shane Victorino to knot things up at 2 each. Cardinal Nation was getting nervous.
Their worries were relatively short lived as Matt Holliday drove in a pair to put the Cardinals up 4-2 heading into the eighth inning.
The entertainment continued in the eighth as the Red Sox fought right back with two of their own. Could extra innings be in the cards (pun intended) this night?
And then came the ninth. What a finish! I wish I could have seen everything that went down (I was blocked by many Cardinals on the bench and running out onto the field) after Dustin Pedroia made a great play (or so I’ve been told) on Jon Jay’s grounder to throw out Yadier Molina at the plate…
…only to have Jarrod Saltalamacchia throw widely to third base in an attempt to nail Allen Craig at third. That’s where things unfolded rather slowly from my vantage point, as I saw that the throw sailed past Will Middlebrooks.
I readied for yet another possible play at the plate as the Cardinal’s dugout erupted and raced towards home plate, blocking my view. What I didn’t know was that Middlebrooks apparently interfered with Craig at third and delayed his plateward dash, and a play at the plate that really wasn’t (or shouldn’t have been) a play at the plate developed. It appeared to me that Craig was out at the plate, but Middlebrooks was called for interference and Craig was awarded home, plating the game winner.
Cardinals win.
What the ??? Crazy!!!
Game Four is in a couple of hours. I’m rooting for a Red Sox win so I am guaranteed a trip back to Boston and, hopefully, a trip to Legal Seafood or some place similar for dinner Tuesday night with the rest of my MLB Photos team.
