Rain Checks Redbirds Drive.

PHILLIES STEP IN TODAY AS HORNSBY CLUB, HALTED BY WET GROUNDS, TRIES TO FIGHT BACK TO .500 MARK

— Rain put the soft shoe on Sportsman’s Park yesterday and stopped the Cardinals just when Rogers Hornsby’s outfit had its bats smoking.

The final Boston game was washed away, shoved off for later settlement, and the Braves slipped out of town without taking another cuffing from a Redbird club that had spent three straight afternoons pounding them from foul line to foul line.

The timing was a rotten break for St. Louis.

The Cardinals had just torn loose for forty-four safeties and thirty-three runs in three straight victories. The batting order, dead and dragging after the Giant series, had suddenly come alive like a boiler catching flame. Hornsby’s men had won three in a row and five of their last seven.

Then came the rain.

So instead of another crack at the Braves, the Cardinals spent the afternoon waiting under gray skies while the grounds crew wrestled with wet canvas and puddles around the lot.

Now the Philadelphia Phillies come calling.

Art Fletcher’s Quakers arrive from Chicago for a five-game stand beginning today, and they find the Cardinals still below the .500 shelf but finally kicking hard toward it. St. Louis stands at 15 victories and 17 defeats, while Philadelphia comes in seventh with 11 triumphs against 18 setbacks.

That puts the issue plain.

If the Cardinals mean to climb out of the second-division mud before leaving town, this is the week to do it.

Hornsby’s club has eight home games left before the next National League swing, five against Philadelphia and three more against Cincinnati. To regain even footing before the road trip, the Redbirds must take six of those eight.

That is no small chore.

But after the way they handled Boston, it no longer sounds like a fairy tale either.

The Phillies are not the Braves, but they are no terror gang at present. Fletcher’s club has had trouble enough making its own way through the league and comes west hoping St. Louis cools off before the whole Cardinal batting order starts another parade around the sacks.

Hornsby has Jess Haines or Arthur Reinhart in line for the opening pitching call, though the final choice may wait until game time. Haines gives the club a veteran right arm and a steady hand. Reinhart, one of the better southpaws in the circuit last season, offers a different puzzle for the Quaker bats.

The Phillies may answer with Wayland Dean, the right-hander picked up from the Giants during the winter deal that helped send Jimmy Ring to New York.

Whoever takes the ball, the Cardinals need the same thing they found against Boston: route work, early runs, and no late-inning foolishness.

The lineup finally looks dangerous again.

Hornsby continues to hammer the apple as though every pitcher in the league owes him money. Jim Bottomley has begun swinging heavier timber. Les Bell has been driving the ball with real authority. Ray Blades remains dangerous whenever a pitcher floats one near his bat barrel.

Most important, Taylor Douthit has started to climb from that awful batting fog that had him buried earlier in the month. The young center gardener’s glove never left him, but the bat had gone cold enough to make every trip to the platter feel like a public examination. The Boston series gave him signs of life.

Now he must carry them forward.

That is the larger question for the whole club.

Was Boston merely soft meat?

Or have the Cardinals finally begun to stir?

Philadelphia will tell the tale better than the Braves did. The Quakers may sit low in the table, but they still bring big-league pitching, veteran hands, and enough stick work to punish a careless slabman. The Cardinals cannot afford to treat them like another club already packed for the cellar.

The rain gave St. Louis one unwanted pause.

Now the schedule gives Hornsby’s men a test.

Five games with Philadelphia stand between the Cardinals and the .500 mark.

And after yesterday’s washout cooled the park, the Redbirds must prove today that their bats still carry fire.

— Mike Allen, Bird Chatter Post