Saint Louis Cardinals Baseball Team

It was the longest 341-foot home run in history, sailing from a grainy pale bat into the hearts of a nation. Although the big man stumbled around first base, he eventually touched them all; his son, his teammates, his town, our towns. With his 62nd home run Tuesday night, a brilliant white streak through a sea of murky red, Mark McGwire did a number on America.

Wes Brickey's most treasured baseball memento is a game ball from a Houston Astros' 6-4 regular-season victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. It was the ball Darryl Kile pitched while claiming his first major league victory on June 23, 1991. Kile gave the ball to former Chaffey College baseball coach Howard Lowder, the man credited with teaching Kile the curveball that he developed into the signature pitch of his repertoire.

SCHEDULE * Today--San Diego (Joey Hamilton 15-9) at St. Louis (Todd Stottlemyre 14-11), 1 p.m., ESPN. * Thursday--San Diego (Scott Sanders 9-5) at St. Louis (Andy Benes 18-10), 1 p.m., ESPN. * Saturday--St. Louis (Donovan Osborne 13-9) at San Diego (Andy Ashby 9-5), 4:30 p.m., NBC. * Sunday--(If necessary) St. Louis at San Diego, 8 p.m., ESPN. * Monday--(If necessary) St. Louis at San Diego, 1 p.m., ESPN. RECORDS San Diego 91-71; St. Louis 88-74. HEAD TO HEAD St. Louis won season series, 8-4.

A day-off workout? A playoff workout. Tony Gwynn slips on a jacket, picks up a bat and beams. Couldn't be happier. "Everyone else is playing golf today," he says. "We're back here ready to go work. I can't tell you how good that feels." Gwynn is returning to postseason play for the first time since 1984. His San Diego Padres are here as National League West champions, riding the crest of that three-game sweep on the Dodgers' turf. A best-of-five playoff series against the Central champion St.

Jason Marquis did not eat, or drink. He did pitch, and he won. Shawn Green stirred national controversy last month with his decision to play for the Dodgers in one of two games during Yom Kippur, the holiest time of the Jewish year. Marquis, who makes his first career playoff start tonight for the St. Louis Cardinals against Green and the Dodgers, faced a similar quandary three years ago and devised his own solution to the dilemma of serving his faith and his team too.

Dennis Eckersley turned 42 Thursday to catch Rick Honeycutt, the oldest player in the majors. Appropriately, they partied together. Eckersley pitched a perfect ninth inning to save a 5-4 victory for the St. Louis Cardinals over the San Diego Padres after Honeycutt restricted a treacherous San Diego threat to one run in the eighth, an inning in which Tony Gwynn, respecting Honeycutt's slider, chose to sacrifice rather than hit and run.

ST. LOUIS -- A couple of days after announcing he was giving up pitching to make a quixotic attempt at rebuilding his baseball career as an outfielder, Rick Ankiel stepped into the Cardinals' spring training clubhouse and found his locker had been moved from the west side, where the pitchers dress, to the opposite wall. "You're one of us now," one veteran position player told him. "You should be with us."

What the St. Louis Cardinals set out to do here Sunday night was not to silence the voluble Metrodome crowd, an acoustic impossibility, but to make sure the Minnesota Twins did not answer the decibel. They wanted the fans sobbing into those ubiquitous Homer Hankies, not waving them in raucous celebration. Instead, the Cardinals once more were enveloped by the sights, sounds and bats of a team and a ballpark that make nearly an unbeatable combination. St.

Now that Mark McGwire has again hammered his name into baseball history with his 500th and 501st home runs, perhaps the nation, once again, will turn its attention to another captivating race between the St. Louis Cardinals' slugger and the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa. Or will it? Based on the relative lack of excitement the duel has generated so far this season, experts in fan behavior say the American people and the media appear to have been suffering from a classic case of Been There, Done That.