Mike Shildt and his Padres have a chance to bury the Cardinals’ playoff hopes
When the San Diego Padres arrived in St. Louis on September 17, 2021, they were just one game behind the Cardinals for the final National League wild card spot and staring down a series that could have catapulted them back into control of their own destiny in the playoff race.
Instead, the Cardinals swept those three games to extend their winning streak to eight, and it would finish as a franchise-record 17-game stretch without a loss. The Padres would spin out, with stars Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis, Jr. getting into a heated argument in the visitors’ dugout at Busch Stadium that set the tone for their 2-13 finish to the season.
Mike Shildt was in the Cardinals dugout for that series, and he makes his return to St. Louis this week with the Padres.
St. Louis is eight games back of San Diego as the series begins, and in desperate need of wins this week to keep their season alive. Three years later, the Padres have a real opportunity to bury them over a four-game stretch.
History may not always repeat itself, but sometimes it certainly rhymes.
“We closed it down and were able to win that series and go on a nice run,” Shildt said Monday from the unfamiliar-to-him third base dugout. “We played good baseball, and we expect to come in and play good baseball here.”
Less than a month from the start of that series, Shildt was fired by the Cardinals, who highlighted nebulous “philosophical differences” in a weak attempt to explain away whatever communication breakdown occurred between the manager and others in the organization. On the occasion of his first return to Busch Stadium since his dismissal, Shildt insisted that he is “at peace” with how his time in St. Louis – particularly the end – played out.
“We don’t get a lot of mulligans in life,” he said. “I haven’t lost any sleep with how I did things for 18 years here. I can rest comfortably knowing that I did my best to be a caretaker of the organization, and as Tony [La Russa] would say, to do my part and put my little piece in.
“As I got more opportunities, the pieces became a little bit bigger, but I always wanted to do the very best I could, and had a pure heart for making sure this organization moved forward. I have a lot of peace with that.”
Baseball holds a big piece of the national imagination, but it’s a relatively small and insular community. The man who caught the final out of the most recent Cardinals World Series victory, Allen Craig, is a special assistant in San Diego and was in uniform for the Padres on Monday night, greeting old teammates on the field.
Shildt managed each of Matt Carpenter, Lance Lynn and Tommy Pham at various levels throughout the St. Louis system, and he was the scout who recommended and signed Cardinals manager Oli Marmol as a shortstop out of the College of Charleston, which fell inside of Shildt’s scouting territory.
As much as everyone at the ballpark – particularly everyone on the St. Louis side of the field – is invested in acting as though this week’s series is just another in the schedule gauntlet the Cardinals must run to drag themselves back into contention, it’s impossible to deny the background connections which underpin every inning of this four-game set.
Three years removed from Shildt’s final game as manager of the Cardinals, there were only four players in Monday’s home lineup who he managed in the majors – Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, Lars Nootbaar and Carpenter, who has since left St. Louis and returned.
Among Monday’s Padres lineup, only Jake Cronenworth, Manny Machado and Jurickson Profar were in San Diego for the decisive 2021 series. So too was Pham, on the other side of the field.
There were no admissions of hard feelings or a particular desire to beat down an opponent for any reason other than that which is expected. The Padres are trying to chase down the Dodgers and make it back to the postseason, and the Cardinals are scrapping to stay relevant in the race. Whatever time there is for warm welcomes – whatever healing still needs to be done – will wait until the end of the season, or the winter, or perhaps won’t be done at all.
For all the talk about being at peace, there wasn’t much talk Monday about forgiveness. That’s to be expected, too; there are only 30 major league managerial jobs, and Shildt lost his on a phone call which he anticipated would be about a contract extension.
Things change quickly, which makes the familiarity all the more jarring.
“It’s good to come back,” Shildt said. “A lot of people you want to see, a lot of good relationships, a lot of really really good memories and people. Excited to come back, but mostly it’s about the Padres coming in here and playing good baseball.”
That, three years ago, would have been difficult to imagine.
This story was originally published August 26, 2024 at 6:49 PM.
