St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 14, 2001

Morris Is A Bright Spot As Cards End Year On A Dismal Note

By Mike Eisenbath

PHOENIX - If anything good can come from defeat, perhaps there is this from the Cardinals' loss Sunday: Matt Morris is one of baseball's best pitchers.

"Hopefully it takes away any doubt about the caliber of player he is," catcher Mike Matheny said. "He's an elite pitcher. It's an honor to sit back there and watch how he executed in a situation like he was in. That wouldn't be easy for a guy who has been here 100 times. He's still young, but he's so good."

Good enough to allow only six hits and one run in seven innings against the Diamondbacks in Game 1, although he lost 1-0 to Arizona veteran Curt Schilling.

Good enough to allow just seven hits and one run in eight innings in Sunday's Game 5. He didn't get the loss, but the Cardinals fell 2-1 in nine innings - again to Schilling.

"You don't appreciate how good Matt is until you see him do what he does in games like that," teammate J.D. Drew said. "And not a lot of people know he pitched the last five or six innings with a blister on his thumb as big as I've ever seen. It shows the kind of dedication and determination he has."

Morris is just 27, seven years younger than Schilling. And until this season, his experience in the big leagues was limited by age and injury. Still, he proved that he is a big-game pitcher.

"If Game 1 didn't take care of it," manager Tony La Russa said, "then someone is a tough critic, unfair and full of baloney. All he did was cement what he's done all year long.

"But if you would have told me he would have pitched 15 innings in these two games and given up two runs, and we would have not won either game, that's hard. It's hard to get beat the way he pitched."

Morris surrendered only one run Sunday, when Reggie Sanders belted a home run deep into the left-field seats in the fourth inning. When Sanders came to the plate in the sixth inning, Morris pushed him back with a fastball. Sanders reacted by taking several steps toward the mound and shouting at Morris.

"I think that's silly," Morris said. "He hit a curveball (for a home run). I'm not going to throw him another hanging curveball. I'm going to try and let him know I'm out there. I'm going to throw him fastballs in. That's how I got guys out all year. You've got guys nowadays who are ready to charge the mound if you throw inside.

"But I get fired up with that stuff and I tried to fire up the team with all that. That's baseball. I enjoy it. I love it. That's the way it should be."

Once upon a time, such a moment might have rattled Morris. Smoke would have poured out of his ears. Flames would have flickered in his eyes.

"Matheny came out and choked me a little bit," Morris said. "He told me, 'Hey, you'd better make pitches.' I get emotional, and I could have let the game slip away a little bit."

Sanders worked for a walk in that plate appearance, but Morris got out of the inning with a double-play grounder. He pitched out of every other jam Sunday as well.

"It was just a great game to be part of," Morris said. "A great game for everybody to watch, I'm sure. I like to sit back and watch a game like that."

Morris' disappointment was obvious after the game, but he knows this could have been the beginning of something special.

"You can have a great year and if you lose on this kind of note, it just keeps you hungry to get ready to go next year," Morris said. "But ask anybody in the major leagues if they would trade in for my season and the experience, the opportunity. Anybody in their right mind would love to be in my shoes right now."