There was little argument over which series was most eagerly anticipated last week.  The St. Louis Cardinals were heading to Cincinnati to take on the Reds in a three-game series with the two teams fighting it out at the top of the National League Central division.

Division battles always capture the imagination, even when the Wild Card can make finishing first or second an arbitrary distinction, but this Cardinals-Reds rivalry has a special quality to it.  While the Cards have been a contending team regularly over the last fifteen years, the Reds haven’t made it to the postseason since they were swept 4-0 by the Atlanta Braves in the 1995 NLCS.  Now Cincinnati is back in the playoff hunt, this new old rivalry has been reborn.

There was a real sense of excitement as the opener approached on Monday night, both from fans of the respective teams and neutrals looking on.  The series undoubtedly lived up to expectations. 

It wasn’t the most crisply played set of baseball games you’re likely to see, but what it lacked in finesse it made up for in ferocity.   The tension was palpable, all concerned sensing that these were not just three more games on the schedule.  Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter showed that in the first game when he gave teammate Brendan Ryan a verbal dressing down for failing to be ready for the bottom of the first inning.  It turned out that the bottom of the first frame would be a flashpoint in the second game as well.

Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips had ratcheted up the tension prior to the series opener by stating “I hate the Cardinals. All they do is [complain] and moan about everything, all of them”.  This wasn’t the first time one of the newly-competitive Reds had dished out a few verbals in a rival’s direction this season.  Joey Votto caused a minor stir at the All-Star break by stating “I don’t like the Cubs” and claiming that he didn’t congratulate Marlon Byrd, his National League All-Star teammate, for a great defensive play because “I’m not going to pat anybody with a Cubs uniform on the back”. 

Votto later claimed he was joking and frankly the comments from both players had a desperate edge to them, like the little kid in the playground shouting at the big boys to try and get a rise out of them.

Well, it worked.  It’s amazing how grown men can be fabulously offended by a few deliberately provocative, but really fairly tame, words.  Phillips used his mouth to pour petrol on the series and then used his bat to set the place ablaze, giving Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina a ‘friendly’ tap on the shin guard as he walked to the plate to lead off the bottom of the first inning of the second game.

What followed was a classic bench-clearing incident, the likes of which baseball excels in and no other sport can match.  It had everything: the standard beginning of two players (Phillips and Molina) confronting each other nose-to-nose, the benches clearing to join in with a bit of pushing and shoving and then the glorious second wave of the bullpens rushing in from the outfield to the cheers of the crowd.  

What set it apart from more run-of-the-mill ‘baseball bundles’ is that just when it seemed to have petered out, the aggro sprang back into life with even greater ferocity.  The pack surged into the netting behind the backstop, like a crowd swaying to one side on a football terrace, and Reds starter Johnny Cueto reacted to being pinned “like a rat in the corner with nowhere to go”, as manager Dusty Baker memorably described it, by violently lashing out with his spikes like Eric Cantona doing the cancan.

Lord only knows what the Daily Mail would make of a similar incident if it happened on a football pitch (‘the end of the world is nigh, our children are emotionally scarred for life’ etc), but baseball has a welcome way of putting these rare events into perspective, handing out a few suspensions and getting on with the games.

In truth, this one was an unusually ugly bundle and you couldn’t blame the FS Ohio commentator for worrying at the time about the very real risk of players getting injured in the melee. “This is not good at all … it’s just not baseball”, he said.  Still, at the same time, an FS Midwest was bellowing with joy that “this is what baseball’s all about!” and most fans would agree. The FS Ohio commentator noted that ‘there’s not a lot of love between these two ballclubs”, and he’s completely right. 

We wouldn’t want it any other way.  Rivals being nice to each other is all very heart-warming, but it doesn’t set the pulse racing quite like two teams being desperate to come out on top not just because they want to win, but because they want to beat the other team badly too.  Heated rivalries are the lifeblood of any sport and you have to accept that occasionally they will boil over.

There is one more series between the two sides this season, a three-game set on 3-5 September in St. Louis, and it is sure to be another highly-charged event, not least because the Cardinals swept the Reds last week. 

Those with seats in the front row at Busch Stadium might want to take some body armour for protection.