The Old Spitballer Slicks One Past St. Louis.

— The Cardinals were beaten out of the gate and then beaten all the way home yesterday, Brooklyn taking a 7 to 1 decision at Sportsman’s Park with four runs in the opening round, three more in the fifth, and the spitball of Burleigh Grimes finishing the business.

The line tells the bones of it — Brooklyn 7 runs on 8 hits, St. Louis 1 run on 5 — but the shape of the game was written in the first ten minutes.

Brooklyn came out swinging against Bill Sherdel and did not stop until the inning was spent. The Robins opened with firm contact, not flukes but clean strokes, placing the ball where it could not be helped. Men were on before the Cardinals had settled, and once the inning turned, it stayed turned. Four runs crossed in that first assault, and the crowd had barely found its seats when the damage was done.

Sherdel found his footing after that blow and gave the club what he could. From the second through the fourth he kept Brooklyn from adding on, working more carefully, keeping the ball down and the fielding behind him steady enough to hold the line. But the hole was already dug, and the man on the other side was not one to give it back.

Grimes took the ball with a lead and turned the game crooked.

The spitball is supposed to be gone from the trade, but not entirely. A handful of old hands were permitted to carry it forward when the rule came down, and Grimes is among the last who can still wet the ball and send it up there with that late, dirty fall. Yesterday it was working like a pickpocket — slipping past bats that looked ready for it and dropping out of sight just as the swing came through.

The Cardinals tried to meet it square and could not.

In the first three innings they put men on in ones and twos but never brought them through. A hit here, a base runner there, then a soft out, a check swing, a ball that would not stay where it was expected. The crowd stirred once or twice when a chance showed, but the follow never came.

Brooklyn added the rest in the fifth.

That inning did not roar the way the first had, but it did the same work. The Robins found space again, gathered their hits, and pushed three more across. It was enough to put the game out of reach, and from there the afternoon settled into a long finish.

St. Louis scratched its only run late, after the game had already tilted beyond saving. It came without a rally behind it, a lone mark on a day that never gathered strength at the plate. Five hits in all, and not one stretch where they came together.

Brooklyn’s order moved as a unit. Zack Wheat did his part in the steady fashion that has marked his years in the league, keeping the line honest and helping the Robins make the most of what they got. They did not overhit, did not waste swings, and did not give anything back once ahead.

Grimes worked the full nine innings and was never in true trouble. There were moments — a man reaching, a flicker of noise in the stands — but nothing that rose to a real threat. He kept the ball low, kept it moving, and kept the Cardinals guessing until the last out.

Sherdel’s line will show the loss, and the early inning put it there.

Outside of that first rush and the added trouble in the fifth, he held as well as could be expected. But against a man throwing that kind of ball, one bad inning is enough, and two will bury you.

The series now stands even, and the lesson is plain. The Cardinals have seen Brooklyn’s hard arm and its crooked one, and yesterday they answered neither. A club sitting under even cannot afford to give games away at the bell, and cannot expect to climb while chasing pitches it cannot solve.

This one was lost in the first, sealed in the fifth, and never truly threatened in between.

— Mike Allen, Bird Chatter Post