The Days of Whine and Cork - Part 1 of 2
A long-lost rivalry produced the greatest (regular-season) game in St. Louis Cardinals history.
Sports are so sociologically useful that they quickly appear any time a group of people start having a large civilization, though it has taken millennia of patient revision to work the real bloodshed out of its simulated alternatives.
Watching team sports takes our human preoccupation with conflict and tendency to look for “others” to root against and gives those tendencies a safer outlet, one where there need not be any real basis for conflict, as long as the participants and spectators can get it all out of their systems. It’s pretend—unless you live in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, it’s real.
And while real-world feuds and hatreds can become nearly indestructible, enduring across generations, sports rivalries are the emotional equivalent of a Potemkin village: easily erected, convincing enough from certain angles, and—when taken down—leaving little trace.
Anyway, did you know that the Cardinals used to hate the Mets?
Looking at the two teams today, there is almost nothing left to suggest this history. They occupy different regions of the country; they play in different divisions. The Cardinals are one of the National League’s oldest teams, whereas the Mets were among the first of the expansion clubs that arrived in the late 1960s and 1970s. Imagine if you were obsessed with one-upping your grandfather—doesn’t seem right, does it?
But there was a brief period when all the conditions to make the Mets and Cardinals bitter rivals existed. Between 1969 and 1994, both teams played in the same division, the National League East, and within that window was another, much smaller window when both teams were consistently good enough to be the biggest obstacles in each other's way up the mountain. And so, between 1985 and 1988, the Mets and Cardinals kept up one of the most spirited rivalries in baseball.
In that four-year stretch, each team claimed the NL East title twice. The Cardinals won two pennants, in 1985 and 1987, but no championships; the Mets won the pennant and the World Series in 1986 and the division in 1988.
In 1985, the Mets finished just three games behind the Cardinals, and the same thing happened in 1987. The Cardinals, for their part, seemed to alternate between on- and off-years, so when the Mets won, St. Louis really wasn’t in the picture. The Mets’ catcher, Gary Carter, had a theory about what happened in ‘86, and in 1987 you could read all about it in his recently-published autobiography. According to Carter, the Mets had finished off the 1986 Cardinals with a four-game sweep…in April:
“We were in first place, four and a half games in front of the Cardinals. I don’t think they held the faintest hope of catching us. … the fire had gone out of them. You could see it in their faces—something missing, a quiet look.”
This was a big part of what St. Louis hated about the Mets: they were “insufferably smug,” led in this regard by Carter and the former Cardinal (and Seinfeldian “pretty boy”), Keith Hernandez. In April 1987, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist pointed out that in the wake of their World Series win, “no less than eight of the Mets’ famous players, manager, and broadcasters have now written autobiographies.”1 The reigning champions often gave the impression of a team doing your team a favor just by showing up, and a begrudging St. Louis wasn’t having it.
Resentment and enmity were the perfect emotions for morning talk radio, and after arriving in 1984, local radio personality J.C. Corcoran spent increasing portions of his airtime criticizing the Mets and turning them into the villains of St. Louis’ baseball story. Searching for a derogatory term reflecting “something far down the food chain,” Corcoran tried out “pond scum,” decided he liked it, and put it in heavy rotation.
After the Mets’ 1986 World Series victory, the need to take the now-champs down a peg or two became even more urgent, and Corcoran added the last, inevitable ingredient to his formula: commodification.
Corcoran hired an airplane to fly his motto over Busch Stadium when New York was in town, and the resulting ovation was so loud that the St. Louis batter, second baseman Tommy Herr, was forced to call time.
“The Mets are Pond Scum” T-shirts arrived in July, 1987 and they were an instant hit. “We had up to 200 to 300 people waiting in line outside the door to get them,” the vendor told the Post-Dispatch. “It’s mass hysteria. I kid you not.” 17,000 units sold in the first week of sales.
But long before the merchandise dropped, the hottest rivalry of the season kicked off on April 17 when the Mets came to Busch Stadium, making April feel like September.
The first game of the three-game set went to the Cardinals by a score of 4-3. 43,000 people saw second baseman Tommy Herr hit the big blow: a sharp single in the bottom of the sixth scored two runs and won the game. Herr went home happy that night, but in baseball, tomorrow always comes so quickly, and in Herr’s case, tomorrow would bring the signature moment of his St. Louis career, and the game that longtime Post-Dispatch writer Rick Hummel ranked as the greatest regular-season game in Cardinals history.
But what makes a great game great? Especially in April?
As many of you know (and we think, appreciate), we don’t do a lot of fancy statistics stuff here at Project 3.18, because there are many smart people already doing that and because we would be bad at it. But because it relates so closely to storytelling (our thing), today we want to tell you about a narrative statistic: Win Probability Added (WPA).
Essentially, at the start of every game, both teams have a statistically-identical opportunity to win: 50% chance. Makes sense, right?
From there, however, anything can and does happen, and each in-game outcome—walks, hits, runs, and outs—changes the odds by adding a little (or a lot) of probability that one team will beat the other. During a game, this stat doesn’t offer much insight, because no sport better defies long odds. Because there is no clock, “too late” does not exist in baseball. There is always a chance.
But once the outcome is known, it can be fun to look at a chart of how much each in-game event shifted the likelihood of the outcome, how many pendulum-swings there were, and how large. Essentially, you can look at the shape of a WPA chart and instantly grasp, visually, how exciting that game was.
Here, for example, is the WPA chart for a more recent game, a May 15, 2024 snoozer between the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves:
The Cubs took an early lead and gradually pulled away, with the Braves never really threatening to make it interesting. You can see how the odds of Cubs winning (gray) build inexorably and inevitably until the Braves have finally been snuffed out. A 7-1 victory is fun if you are a Cubs fan, but hardly thrilling from an objective point of view. So that is what a boring game looks like, in one visual.
Now let’s look at the same chart for a game widely regarded as one of the most exciting and “greatest” of all time, Game Six of the 1975 World Series:
Really different look here, right? And this is why we love WPA charts: The roller-coaster games produce graphs that look like something you could ride at a Six Flags (if you were over 48 inches tall).
So now that we have a context, we can look at the WPA visualization of the Mets/Cardinals game on April 18, 1987:
Make sure to double-check your lap restraint!
April 18 would be what writer Rick Hummel nicely described as “a full moon game,” which wasn’t quite true—the moon had been waning for four days—but it felt right. Under that moon on the Astroturf of Busch Stadium were 17 All-Stars, 3 MVPs, and the previous two Rookies of the Year and 41,000 fans in the seats above. Setting aside the drama, the game showed off many of the tenets and features of “Whiteyball,” as orchestrated by the Cardinals’ manager, Whitey Herzog.
Whiteyball focused on speed, defense, and line-drive hitting, a scheme engineered for cavernous multipurpose stadiums where home runs dropped into gloves while ground balls and players’ spikes skimmed across hard, artificial surfaces. The Cardinals’ shortstop, Ozzie Smith, stole two bases that night, one of which perfectly encapsulates him and his team (we’ll get to it). When it was over, the Whiteyball Cardinals scored 12 runs with only one home run in the mix (that home run being the reason we’re all gathered here), and struck out just four times.
Under Herzog, the Cardinals fought with a Swiss-army offense. “With today’s players, it’s just another out,” Tommy Herr said in 2020, “but to us, it was an embarrassment to strike out.”
The Cardinals promotional team had clearly not checked the lunar calendar before planning a giveaway promotion for the evening. April 18 was “Seat Cushion Night” at Busch Stadium. The first 35,000 fans through the gates would receive a complimentary white seat cushion, courtesy of K-Mart (celebrating 25 years of being kind of a run-down 1980s Target). The marketing director for the Cardinals recalled that seat cushions were a regular giveaway during the 1980s, until April 18, 1987: “It wasn’t the first one, but it was the last one.”
In the fourth inning, down 5-0 and the odds of a forgettable loss rising, the Cardinals began a rally against the Mets’ starter, Ron Darling. Center fielder Willie McGee began with a weak single to second base, scoring a run. The next batter was right fielder Jim Lindeman, and he doubled, scoring two more. Given the mild-to-moderate excitement, a few fans seemingly lost control of their complimentary seat cushions, which fluttered harmlessly down to the playing field. No more than a dozen, but people noticed.
The aforementioned “full moon” activity really began in that fourth inning when the Cardinals’ catcher, Steve Lake, bunted foul up the right field line. The Mets’ first baseman, Keith Hernandez, was closest to the ball, and he decided to creatively remove it from the field by kicking it straight into the nearby Cardinals dugout.
The Cardinals third baseman, Terry Pendleton, did not appreciate this at all, and he picked up the ball and threw it back onto the field in Hernandez’ general direction. A pointed conversation ensued.
“It was two competitors,” Hernandez said afterward.
It was the heat of battle. We had words in the middle innings, but when he got that hit in the last inning, we made up. Terry’s a good kid. I shouldn’t have kicked the ball in the dugout. I was wrong.
The Cardinals scored two more runs that inning, tying the game until the bottom of the sixth, when Tommy Herr, on something of a tear, hit a go-ahead, line-drive double into right field, scoring Ozzie Smith. Hundreds of seat cushions now sailed out onto the field, their owners perhaps hoping to spend the rest of the game standing. Play was stopped for six minutes while the grounds crew gathered up the cushions, which fortunately had handles and stacked easily.
Trying to finish the game, the Cardinals’ top reliever, Todd Worrell, walked five of the seven Mets he faced over two innings. That Herzog sent him out for a second inning after the first three passes suggests some level of distrust in the rest of his bullpen. Perhaps this was well-founded: When Worrell was finally removed, his replacement promptly gave up back-to-back RBI singles. 6-5 Cardinals became 7-6 Mets.
So now the Cardinals were down to their last outs and needing a little magic. Fortunately, they had a wizard. Ozzie Smith walked to lead off the bottom of the ninth, and Tommy Herr successfully bunted him to second. Smith then stole third, and when Gary Carter’s throw sailed wide, Smith sped home, scoring a run without requiring the Cardinals to register a hit in the inning. 7-7, and on to extra innings.
In the tenth, the Mets did their own Whiteyball routine and got the same result, turning a walk into a run and taking the lead without a hit. 8-7.
In the bottom of the tenth, the Cardinals faced reliever Jesse Orosco, who, Herr almost apologetically recalled, “did not have his slider working.” Terry Pendleton singled. Steve Lake singled. Tom Pagnozzi pinch hit and singled, tying the game again. The game seemed destined to continue forever, but most of the audience was seated in particular comfort and didn’t seem to mind. Ozzie Smith walked, and the bases were loaded for Tommy Herr.
Nowadays, in this situation, we are all thinking “grand slam,” but this was peak Whiteyball and this was Tommy Herr, so he was thinking “sacrifice fly,” and not unreasonably: “That was all we needed.” But for this particular hitter, even a deep fly ball was somewhat aspirational. Herr was a capable, practically-minded batsman, but nearly devoid of home run power. He hit only 28 home runs in his entire 13-year career, and eight of those came in one year, 1985. In 1986, he hit two.
“I normally wouldn’t swing on the first pitch in that situation,” Herr said afterward, “but I knew he couldn’t afford to walk anybody and I wanted a good swing at a fastball. [Orosco] kind of threw it right where I swung.”2
Regardless of who the batter was, Orosco knew what trouble looked like (and sounded like) coming off the bat, mustering an “Oh no,” as the ball sped away toward the left field wall. “I was hoping it would hit a bird or something,” he said. No birds were harmed as the walk-off grand slam sailed over the Montreal Expos logo on the left-field wall and into St. Louis lore.
There were no birds, but seat cushions were soon aloft in the thousands, wheeling in exultant flocks as Tommy Herr made a businesslike jog around the bases.
“It was kind of like the floodgates opened,” Herr remembered in 2020. His staid trot ended in an even more serious home plate celebration—these Cardinals were hard-nosed—as the cushions alighted like oversized confetti. The second baseman allowed himself one moment of delight as he emerged from the brief scrum, scooped up a cushion, and tossed into the air, breaking into a full smile for the first time since his game-winning blow.
That night, Herr went 3-3 with two walks, and the only time he recorded an out, it was on purpose—a sacrifice bunt. The home run was (of course) his first of the season. The first of two.
Herr didn’t keep a cushion, but Cardinals fans never let him forget what they looked like: “I’ve signed an awful lot of them over the years. I can’t believe that many people kept them. Those must have been the people in the upper deck.”
Far from it, actually: “Being in the 300 level, I got ‘good air’ on the throw,” one 10-year old fan remembered 30 years later.
Seeing all of the returned merchandise littering the field, announcer Jack Buck remarked: “They could have Seat Cushion Night again tomorrow. Collect ‘em and give ‘em out again.”
The next day when the players returned to the park, the grounds crew was still cleaning up.
“I don’t think they are going to have seat cushion night here in a while,” pitcher Pat Perry said. “At least they shouldn’t have it against the Mets again. Maybe next time they should hold it during a series with Pittsburgh.”
“It was a surreal thing, crazy,” Herr remembered. “The fact that it was against the Mets just intensified things. There was such an animosity from our fans towards the Mets. The two teams didn’t really like each other that much. It was a great way to end that game and send a message to them that we were back.”
To Hummel, the game immediately became a “Where were you when…” Cardinal moment. “Fans sent seat cushions sailing onto the field and drivers honked horns in the streets as though the Cardinals had won their 100th game rather than their sixth.“
What happened out there, he asked Herzog afterward. What was in the air tonight? Other than promotional giveaways.
“I don’t know, but it was very entertaining,” the Cardinals manager said. “I guess that will be the end of seat cushion nights.”
Yes, that was so, but Seat Cushion Night’s sacrifice renewed the rivalry for the opening season, and the chip on St. Louis’ shoulder wasn’t going anywhere.
Let’s pause it there, but we’ll send out the conclusion earlier than usual—this Thursday!
Why the rush? Because next week we have a very special anniversary to celebrate, and to do that, we need a clear calendar.
On May 30: More CSI: Baseball, as the White Rat tries to catch a rat
Whitey Herzog’s autobiography came out that same year, but this was not mentioned.
“Don’t throw ‘em where they’re swingin’,” seems like a suitable companion to “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.”
Thanks Paul.
All I needed for that one was a hot dog and a beer.
It looked as if it were snowing in that clip. And, wrapping it up with Wee Willie Keeler seems appropriate.