September 13, 1989: Cardinals’ division hopes fade after scoreless tie with Pirates

Hoping to reignite their late-season surge, keep pace with the National League East Division-leading Chicago Cubs, and avoid a series sweep by the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates, the second-place St. Louis Cardinals turned to NL strikeout leader José DeLeón on September 13, 1989. DeLeón took a one-hit shutout into the sixth inning at Busch Stadium, but the Cardinals were themselves scoreless against Pittsburgh’s Doug Drabek when the game was halted after a long rain delay. Officially a 0-0 tie, it was made up from the beginning a day later; without DeLeón the Cardinals lost to the Pirates, further dimming their title hopes.

Six and a half games back of Chicago on August 18, the Cardinals won 13 of 19 to move within half a game of first. On September 8, St. Louis overcame a six-run deficit at Wrigley Field to reach the doorstep of the division lead, racking up nine runs in the seventh and eighth innings for an 11-8 win. Pedro Guerrero’s three-run eighth-inning homer off closer Mitch Williams put the Cardinals ahead to stay.1

“If there is no joy in Wrigleyville come October, mourners will remember Friday as the afternoon when [St. Louis manager] Whitey Herzog and his gang of bandits wiped that summer-long smile off the friendly confines,” fretted the Chicago Tribune.2

The Cardinals were four outs from first on September 9, but Chicago tied the score with an eighth-inning unearned run and won in the 10th.3 The Cubs’ series-capping victory on Sunday afternoon sent St. Louis home to play Pittsburgh with a 2½-game division deficit.4

Coming off their first winning season in five years, the 1989 Pirates had run aground in a wave of injuries during the season’s first two weeks.5 Fifth place in the NL East had been theirs since May. But Pittsburgh limited St. Louis to three hits and overturned a 1-0 deficit with a three-run seventh inning to win the series opener on September 11.6 A night later, Bob Walk blanked the Cardinals until the ninth inning of the Pirates’ 5-2 win.7 Meanwhile, the Cubs were expanding their lead by sweeping a three-game series from the Montreal Expos.8

St. Louis’ Wednesday night stopper was the 28-year-old DeLeón, whose 180 strikeouts were five more than runner-up Tim Belcher of the Los Angeles Dodgers. DeLeón’s 15-11 record included four complete-game wins, including two shutouts. Fourteen days earlier, on August 30, he had thrown 11 one-hit shutout innings in a hard-luck no-decision against the Cincinnati Reds.9

After an early-career stint with the Pirates that had mixed bravura (taking three no-hitters into the seventh inning in a six-start stretch as a rookie in 1983) with misery (a slide of 28 losses in 31 decisions in 1984 and 1985), DeLeón seemed to have hit his stride in St. Louis. “In his sixth big league season, his statistics have caught up to his potential,” summarized the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.10

Herzog shuffled the lineup behind DeLeón, hoping to give two regulars two days off with Thursday’s scheduled offday.11 First baseman Guerrero, who had appeared in all but one of St. Louis’ 145 games and was second in the NL with 106 RBIs,12 sat in favor of Leon Durham. Third baseman Terry Pendleton, who likewise had missed just one game, was on the bench in favor of Denny Walling.

DeLeón, bothered by an injured thumbnail on his pitching hand,13 walked Jay Bell with one out in the first, but Durham made what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised as a “nice defensive play,” turning former Cardinal Andy Van Slyke’s grounder into a 3-6-3 double play.14

The next five Pirates batters were retired before Drabek batted with two outs in the third. Drabek’s six hits – all singles – in 68 at-bats had netted just a .088 season batting average, but he lined DeLeón’s first pitch into the left-field corner for a double.

“I was just trying to make contact,” Drabek said. “He had the pitch up a little, and I was fortunate enough to hit it over the infield.”15

DeLeón, however, got John Cangelosi to ground to second, stranding Drabek and beginning a run of eight Pirates set down in a row.

The 27-year-old Drabek brought a 12-11 record to St. Louis. He made it through the first three innings allowing just one baserunner, on Tom Brunansky’s two-out single in the second. With two outs in the fourth, Durham walked and Walling singled, but Brunansky grounded out to third baseman Bobby Bonilla, who had come to the Pirates in a deal that sent DeLeón to the Chicago White Sox in July 1986.16

A light drizzle began as St. Louis’ José Oquendo led off the fifth with a single. Former Pirate Tony Peña hit a bouncer up the middle with Oquendo running on a 2-and-1 pitch. Seemingly bound for center field, the ball struck second base umpire Charlie Williams on the left foot. Peña had a single, but Oquendo, his sights on third, had to return to second on the dead ball.17

DeLeón sacrificed the runners to second and third for the top of the Cardinals’ order. Willie McGee hit a sharp one-hopper, but second baseman José Lind gathered it, looked Oquendo back to third, and threw out McGee.18 Ozzie Smith grounded out to end the inning.

Drabek was still the Pirates’ sole baserunner when he batted with one out in the sixth, as rain fell heavily.19 His fly ball pushed left fielder Milt Thompson to the warning track. The ball struck Thompson’s glove, then his stomach. Drabek took second on the error.20

“I just went back there and couldn’t stop, with the rain and everything,” Thompson said.21

Cangelosi walked on a 3-and-1 pitch, and umpiring crew chief John McSherry summoned the grounds crew. It was 8:54 PM.22 With the rain unrelenting more than 2½ hours later, McSherry declared the game a tie.23

It was the first major-league game with a 0-0 final since the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies played 18 scoreless innings on the next-to-last day of the 1965 season. The statistics counted, but the unresolved outcome necessitated a Thursday afternoon makeup game.

Unable to return DeLeón to the mound, the Cardinals started veteran Bob Tewksbury, who had spent the entire season at Triple A.24 “Whitey Herzog’s best pitcher had been squandered for no useful purpose,” concluded Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News.25

Pittsburgh closed out the sweep with a 4-2 win. Just 1,519 paid spectators—the smallest gate in the Cardinals’ 1966-2005 residency at Busch Stadium—and 2,015 fans with vouchers from the tie witnessed the hastily scheduled game.26 St. Louis was 5½ games behind Chicago.

The Cubs wrapped up the NL East on September 26; the Cardinals came in third, seven games back. DeLeón’s 201 strikeouts led the NL. In September 1990, Drabek—headed for the NL Cy Young Award—was on the mound at Busch Stadium when the Pirates clinched the NL East title.27

Major League Baseball changed its rules on tie games in 2007; rather than replaying weather-halted ties from scratch, the games were suspended and resumed.28 Through the 2025 season, the only official tie under the new rules was a 1-1 Pirates-Cubs draw in September 2016, and the 1989 St. Louis-Pittsburgh deadlock remained the most recent scoreless tie in big-league history.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown and copy-edited by Keith Thursby. SABR members Gary Belleville and Kurt Blumenau provided insightful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Photo credit: José DeLeón, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Stathead.com for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198909130.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1989/B09130SLN1989.htm

Notes

1 Rick Hummel, “Guerrero Blast Floors Cubs: Cards Rally Cuts Lead to ½ Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 9, 1989: 1C.

2 Bob Verdi, “Wily White Rat Spoils Cub Party,” Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1989: 2,1. “Friendly Confines” is a popular nickname for Wrigley Field.

3 Rick Hummel, “Cubs Win, Stay in 1st,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 10, 1989: 1D.

4 Rick Hummel, “Cards Play Whiffball, Lose: Cubs Strike Out 18 in 4-1 Triumph, Shove Cardinals 2½ Behind,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 11, 1989: 1C.

5 Bob Hertzel, “Losses Mount for Pirates as LaValliere Goes Down,” Pittsburgh Press, April 17, 1989: B3.

6 Rick Hummel, “Pirates Dunk Sinking Cardinals: No Batmen to the Rescue,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 12, 1989: 1C.

7 Rick Hummel, “Pirate Win Has Cards Wobbling,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 13, 1989: 1D.

8 Andrew Bagnato, “Cubs Sweep, Expos Weep: Rodgers Tosses in the Towel in Pennant Fight,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1989: 4,1.

9 Dave Leucking, “DeLeon’s 1-Hit Effort Wasted: Cards Waste Opportunities, Fall 2-0 in 13,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 31, 1989: 1D.

10 Mike Eisenbath, “Potential Reached: Cardinals Ace DeLeon Struggled as Young Phenom,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 14, 1989: 3F.

11 Vahe Gregorian and Dan O’Neill, “Herzog Gives Pendleton and Guerrero a Rest,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 14, 1989: 5D.

12 Kevin Mitchell of the San Francisco Giants led the NL with 117 RBIs.

13 Dan O’Neill, “Showers Put Cards on Hold,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 14, 1989: 1D.

14 O’Neill, “Showers Put Cards on Hold.” Durham appeared in three more games before the commissioner’s office suspended him for 60 days on September 22 for failing to comply with baseball’s drug policy. It was the end of his 10-season big-league career. Dan O’Neill, “Durham Suspended for 60 Days,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 23, 1989: 1C.

15 Associated Press, “Cards Waste Effort, 0-0 as Rains Came,” Flat River (Missouri) Daily Journal, September 14, 1989: 7.

16 Bob Hertzel, “DeLeon Fate Sealed in June,” Pittsburgh Press, July 24, 1986: D1.

17 Paul Meyer, “Rain Interrupts Pirates’ Victory Parade,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 14, 1989: 27; O’Neill, “Showers Put Cards on Hold.”

18 O’Neill, “Showers Put Cards on Hold.”

19 Associated Press, “Cards Waste Effort, 0-0 as Rains Came.”

20 Associated Press, “Cards Waste Effort, 0-0 as Rains Came.”

21 Associated Press, “Cards Waste Effort, 0-0 as Rains Came.”

22 Bill Conlin, “Hard to Figure: DeLeon’s Numbers Just Don’t Add Up,” Philadelphia Daily News, September 14, 1989: 99.

23 O’Neill, “Showers Put Cards on Hold.”

24 Vahe Gregorian, “Tewksbury ‘Did His Job’ in 1st Cardinals Start,” St. Louis-Post-Dispatch, September 15, 1989: 5D. It was the beginning of Tewksbury’s six-season tenure in St. Louis, where he posted a 67-46 record and made the NL All-Star team and finished third in the league’s Cy Young Award voting in 1992.

25 Conlin, “Hard to Figure.”

26 Dan O’Neill, “Cardinals Fall 5½ Behind: Paid Attendance of 1,519 Is Smallest Ever at Busch,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 15, 1989: 1D; Vahe Gregorian, “Tiny Crowd Makes Busch a ‘Graveyard with Lights,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 15, 1989: 1D.

27 Dan O’Neill, “Pirates Flag Down Cardinals: Bucs Bag Title, Birds Clinch Last,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 1, 1990: 1C.

28 Tom Timmerman, “In Terms of Wins and Losses, Ties Take a Beating,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 25, 2007: D2.