When Carlos Martinez stepped back into the batter’s box in the fourth inning, his frustrations soothed by a deep breath, the hardest contact his bat had made so far was with the dirt.
On the second strike of his at-bat Martinez had a decidedly strikeout-like reaction, slamming the head of his bat into the box with an intent to cause splinters. He had just whiffed on “the pitch I could hit” and there, 90 feet away, still stood the tying run. Martinez unleashed his two-strike fury — and then, inhale, exhale, unloosed the Cardinals’ offense.
“I finally got my hit,” he said, smiling, “then everybody else started hitting.