and I was there to see it.
I actually do not remember the first time I went to a Major League baseball game. I have the hazy memory that starts at the park. I think it was the old Busch Stadium. I think it had to be before the year 2000 so I was at most seven years old. I don’t remember it even being a discussion; I just piled into my mom’s Dodge Neon with my brother and ended up in downtown St. Louis about 80 minutes later. I couldn’t tell you what happened in that game. I just remember thinking “So this is what everyone is talking about.”
My first distinct baseball memory would happen years later. It was April 27, 2005. My school had recently begun what would become an annual tradition of taking the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to a baseball game for a field trip. I was in sixth grade, and hadn’t been to a baseball game since that first one I could barely recall. The St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Milwaukee Brewers and Mark Grudzielanek was batting leadoff. He kicked off the game with a homerun, which was extremely exciting for 12-year-old me.
After that I paid special attention to Grudzielanek every time he was up — how could I not? He was clearly the best player for the Cardinals — he hit a home run in his first at bat. My logic was sound. He followed his homer with a single in his second at bat. Already this got me thinking that surely it must be a remarkable feat to hit one of every hit in a game. It wasn’t something I could readily recall seeing before. John Mabry famously did it back in 1996, a fact that was mentioned later on, but it was not a common occurrence.
This was all on my mind before Grudzielanek hit a double in the fourth inning. I am not sure if ever rooted for something more than I did for a Mark Grudzielanek triple that afternoon. I knew it would be tough to get, but he would have at least two plate appearances to try most likely. As a leadoff man, he should have the speed to leg one out. I liked the chances. I watched his at bat in the sixth inning with bated breath. One strike. Two strikes.
The pitch.
Grudzielanek reached out in an attempt to protect the plate and shot a hit to the opposite field out in right. It rolled towards the right field corner and Grudzielanek was moving, thinking triple right out the gate. The right fielder misplayed the ball off the corner. Grudzielanek rounded second and was on his way to third.
This was it.
He slid into third without a throw and I stood and cheered. “He did it! He got one of every hit!”
That day I learned “one of every hit” was actually called “hitting for the cycle.” It makes sense, has a nice ring to it. It is poetic and simple. An elegant phrase for perhaps a not-always-elegant achievement. I would later learn more about baseball and learn that it is a sort of meaningless thing to do; statistically hitting four home runs in a game would be more valuable and is less likely (according to MLB.com it has only happened 18 times in history versus 348 cycles; Mark Whiten is the lone Cardinal to hit four homers in one game while 17 different Cardinals have hit for cycles and Ken Boyer did it twice). But there is just something about The Cycle for me. It has the power of a home run, the speed of a triple, the keen placement of a double, and the scrappiness of a single all in one game from a single player. It is a feat that creates a list that can contain Joe Medwick and Stan Musial and Lou Brock and John Mabry. Mark Grudzielanek, who spent one year and amassed 2.8 fWAR with the Cardinals, will forever be part of one of my favorite baseball memories all because he got one of each hit. Baseball is just fun that way, isn’t it?
Here is a list of every Cardinals cycle ever hit and links to the videos.
8/16/1895 Tom Dowd
6/13/1918 Cliff Heathcote
7/15/1927 Jim Bottomley
8/21/1930 Chick Hafey
5/5/1933 Pepper Martin
6/29/1935 Joe Medwick
7/13/1940 Johnny Mize
7/24/1949 Stan Musial
8/14/1960 Bill White
9/14/1961 Ken Boyer
6/16/1964 Ken Boyer
6/27/1973 Joe Torre
5/27/1975 Lou Brock
6/23/1984 Willie McGee
9/15/1991 Ray Lankford
5/18/1996 John Mabry
4/27/2005 Mark Grudzielanek
7/1/2022 Nolan Arenado
Happy Sunday!