Rain Must Fall: The Massacre of Mike Mayers
Dulce et Decorum Est
Each Monday and Friday throughout April, we will review the worst losses the Cardinals experienced from 1996-2016. Up first: the Massacre of Mike Mayers.
The Germans never scared him, my grandfather once told me. He was sitting in a leather chair in his study, located in the back of his house, far away from his wife. He would go there to read, but mostly to sleep, and sometimes to tell his grandchildren stories he had spent a lifetime trying to forget. He wasn’t smoking then, but the chair harbored the smell of past cigars and it made me wish we had two.
No, it wasn’t the Germans. What really scared him during the war, he confessed, was the look in the eyes of his fellow soldiers, the ones that had been on the front lines in France throughout the summer of 1944. “As we moved in, they didn’t say anything...these guys just looked at us. They had a look in their eye; a haunted look. With time, we had that same look.” How sweet.
***
The rain didn’t come at first, but the rolling thunder threatened that it would arrive at any moment, and that it would be fierce and unforgiving. With lightning relentlessly illuminating the sky, the Cardinals delayed and eventually postponed their July 19, 2016 game against the Padres before a single rain drop even fell, electing to play a day/night doubleheader the next day.
Mike Mayers spent that Tuesday night in El Paso, Texas, watching the Memphis Redbirds lose to the Chihuahuas. There was no way for him to know then, as he sat in West Texas, that the rain in St. Louis would have any affect on his life or baseball career.
But because of that rain, the Cardinals did not have an available starter for Sunday’s night nationally televised game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many assumed the team would pitch long reliever Tyler Lyons, but Lyons was forced to throw 4.2 innings of the 16 inning Cardinals-Dodgers Friday game, rendering him unable to start Sunday night. The team looked down I-55 and tapped Mayers for the start.
***
It was a humid 100 degrees when Mayers took the mound in St. Louis for his major league debut. The announcers wondered what could be going through the youngster’s mind as he finished the warm up pitches in preparation.
“Can’t underestimate these first few pitches,” Brett Boone pointed out on the broadcast. “If you can get yourself into a nice rhythm it goes a long way to calming down what is an excitable moment for a first time major leaguer.”
Mayers painted the corner with a 92 mph strike one for his first pitch. “Nothing to it,” Dan Schulman quipped.
That may have been the highlight of the game. While Mayers was able to get one more strike on the Dodger leadoff man, Chase Utley, he couldn’t put the veteran second basemen away. Instead on a 3-2 count, Utley reached out and poked a pitch into center for a leadoff single.
That hit alone was no cause for concern. Mayers had made a good pitch and Utley was a little lucky to push it into center field. Luck avoided Mayers during the next at bat as well when rookie Corey Seager snuck a ground ball just inside the third base bag for an infield hit. A walk to Justin Turner next meant the bases were loaded before Mayers had recorded a single out. The camera caught Mayers’ grandmother grabbing the top of her head with Adrian Gonzalez due up next.
The Mayers family were not good at camouflaging their emotions, and, as a consequence, ESPN reveled in broadcasting them to the country. As Mayers readied his 2-2 pitch to the Dodger first basemen, the camera cut to his sister, her hands pressed together, her mouth pursed in prayer. Mayers delivered the pitch and Gonzalez drove it to straight away centerfield. His family recoiled at the impact. Grand Slam. “Four batters in and it’s 4-0 Dodgers,” Schulman deadpanned.
Before the replay of Gonzalez’s home run was even finished, the next batter Howie Kendrick turned a single into a double. Mike Matheny ambled to the mound to visit Mayers. Matheny tried to assure Mayers, remind him there was a reason he was there and the team had faith in him.
Even if he didn’t believe it, Matheny had no choice but to keep Mayers on the mound. That 16 inning game two days previously had exhausted the bullpen. Mayers was fodder.
Matheny’s pep talk returned instant results. Mayers struck out the next batter and the cheer from the crowd upon the first out seemed to border on sarcasm. The cameras again cut to his family who's cheers were genuine and relieved. The next batter, Andrew Toles, grounded out to short and it appeared that Mayers was going to get out of the inning without further damage done. Sometimes though, the light at the end of a tunnel is an oncoming train.
Mayers walked the next batter to bring up Dodgers pitcher Scott Kazmir. Despite collecting only three hits in thirty-one at bats to that point in the season, Kazmir singled straight up the middle. Two runs scored, 6-0 Dodgers. Mayers was able to induce a ground ball to second to finally end the inning.
Mayers returned to the mound in the second and recorded an out when Seager grounder our to second. The hope that sprung from the groundout was quickly snuffed as Mayers second inning began to unravel like the first.
A Turner single to left was followed by a Gonzalez single to right. As Turner tried to go first to third, Stephen Piscotty sailed the throw wide and into Dodgers dugout. Turner scored on the error and Gonzalez made his way to third. Howie Kendrick then hit an opposite field two run home run two pitches later. It was 9-0 Dodgers as Matheny re-emerged from the dugout, thankfully headed to end Mike Mayers debut.
Mayers ERA stood at 60.75, he had faced 14 batters, nine of them scored. No National League pitcher had ever surrendered as many runs in his debut. No National League pitcher had ever posted a worse game score (1). Damn the rain.
While Mayers made his way to the dugout a few fans stood for a standing ovation. Mayers did not slink his shoulders or lower his head as he walked off the field. He sat on the bench and stared out onto the field, a haunted look on his face, perhaps contemplating what an honor it was to finally be called a Major League Baseball Player.
***
Baseball is not war. It’s not a matter of life and death, despite how some may treat it. But there is one similarity between players and soldiers that I think bears note and that is the detachment. If you support a war, you can’t see soldiers as actual people, whose death will be mourned. Instead, soldiers have to be seen as characters, to whom death is almost welcomed. Is there any greater honor than to die for your country? To look at it any other way makes it too real, too consequential.
Mike Mayers was 24 years old and asked on short notice to ply his trade on national television. “It's the same game: 60 feet, six inches," Mayers said postgame. “I felt like I told myself that over and over. But when you get out there, it's a totally different ballgame. I felt like I kind of started to let my emotions kind of get to me. The game sped up after those first two hits.”
I think back to Tony La Russa’s oft repeated phrase “Buh, men not machines” and to Aledmys Diaz who after hitting a grand slam the day after his friend’s death said “Simply, you have to feel things. It’s very difficult for me to come here and concentrate on the game, but we’re professionals and have to do it.”
These are people. They are not characters. They’re not gods. Perhaps that truth belies the whole point of this site.
Dulce et decorum est, pro patri mori.