CARDINALS SPOIL PIRATES HOME OPENER — HAFEY BLAST AND KEEN’S ARM SILENCE WORLD CHAMPIONS The world champions opened Forbes Field expecting celebration.

CARDINALS SPOIL PIRATES HOME OPENER — HAFEY BLAST AND KEEN’S ARM SILENCE WORLD CHAMPIONS

The world champions opened Forbes Field expecting celebration.

Instead, the Cardinals carried the noise home with them.

St. Louis battled through ten hard innings Thursday afternoon and spoiled Pittsburgh’s home opener with a 5-3 victory over the defending National League champions before a furious crowd at Forbes Field.

And when the afternoon finally ended, one Cardinal still stood on the mound.

Vic Keen.

The right-hander worked all ten innings for St. Louis and pushed his early season record to 2-0 after surviving errors, pressure innings, and a Pittsburgh club that kept threatening to break the game open.

He never let it happen.

The afternoon began well enough for the Cardinals.

St. Louis struck first in the opening inning after consecutive hits placed pressure immediately onto Pittsburgh pitching. Jim Bottomley drove home the first Cardinal run and quieted the opening roar from the packed grandstand as St. Louis grabbed an early 1-0 lead.

The silence did not last long.

Pittsburgh answered hard in the second inning.

The Pirates used Cardinal fielding mistakes to crack the game open and pushed three runs across while Forbes Field came alive behind them. St. Louis errors helped extend the inning and gave the defending champions the opening they wanted.

For a moment, the Cardinals looked ready to collapse under it.

Keen stopped the damage there.

The Cardinal pitcher settled himself and began grinding through inning after inning against a dangerous Pittsburgh lineup that continued placing runners aboard but failed to deliver the blow that could finish St. Louis completely.

Meanwhile the Cardinals slowly fought back.

St. Louis answered with single runs across the early innings and eventually pulled even as the afternoon tightened into a long deadlock between the clubs.

By the late innings every out carried weight.

The crowd pushed Pittsburgh forward.

The Cardinals answered each threat quietly and kept the game alive.

Then came the tenth.

Rogers Hornsby reached safely to begin the inning after another Pirate mistake opened the door for St. Louis.

That brought Chick Hafey to the plate.

Hafey drove the ball deep and hard into the Pittsburgh afternoon and suddenly the Cardinals had the lead again on a two-run home run that stunned the home crowd and sent the St. Louis bench into motion.

Forbes Field fell quiet.

The world champions had been hit hard in their own opener.

Keen still had work left.

The Pittsburgh lineup came to the plate one final time in the bottom half of the tenth needing only a rally to erase the damage.

They found nothing.

Keen closed the inning cleanly and walked away with a complete ten-inning victory after allowing three runs — only one earned — while fighting through ten Pittsburgh hits behind him.

The Cardinals finished with ten hits of their own while capitalizing on Pirate mistakes that helped decide the afternoon.

For St. Louis, the victory carries weight beyond one game in April.

The Cardinals walked directly into the home opening celebration of the defending champions and walked back out with the win.

That kind of victory travels well on a long National League road trip.

— Mike Allen