Rick Ankiel added a couple of home runs to the lore of his return to the majors, leaving his manager almost at a loss to describe Ankiel’s heroics.
“Marvel is a good word,” manager Tony La Russa said after first suggesting his vocabulary had run dry of adjectives for Ankiel. “It is kind of amazing, isn’t it?”
Ankiel cracked open a tie ballgame with the first of his two home runs Thursday and finished the Cardinals’ rain-shortened 16-4 shellacking of Pittsburgh with a career-high seven RBIs. The win pulled St. Louis within one game of the co-leading Cubs and Brewers in the NL Central.
Rewriting his personal bests with each swing of his second career, Ankiel’s RBI binge was the most by a Cardinal this season. It punctuated a homestand for the history books by the pitcher turned star outfielder.
As the Cardinals won five of seven at Busch Stadium, Ankiel drove in 19 runs, hit five home runs, scored 11 runs and batted .440. He slugged 1.160 over seven days at the downtown ballpark, and he did it with panache. His homer Sunday snapped a scoreless tie, and his sacrifice fly was the difference in a win against Cincinnati. His homer Wednesday trimmed the Cards’ lead to a run before a win eluded them.
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His first homer Thursday made a winner of reliever Kelvin Jimenez, who struck out Jason Bay with the bases loaded in the second with the score tied. And Ankiel’s second homer assured a rout was on.
“I feel like the home runs have been there,” Ankiel said. “The consistency has been more here in the big leagues.”
La Russa found a few other words to describe Ankiel’s week.
“Clutch, too,” the manager said. “The hits he’s getting are big.”