Mets Rain on Cardinals' Parade: St. Louis Has a Tough Time Against New York Starter Tom Glavine.

Apr 02, 05:26 AM

Current Headlines: By Bradford Doolittle, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Apr. 2--ST. LOUIS -- Well, it's back to reality for the Cardinals.

The Mets' Tom Glavine pitched six solid innings as New York beat St. Louis 6-1 Sunday as the 2007 season started in front of a sellout crowd of 45,429 at Busch Stadium.

"Better than ever," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said of Glavine, the Mets' ace.

For Glavine, the win left him just nine shy of becoming the 23rd pitcher in big-league history to hit the vaunted 300-career-victory plateau. He allowed one run over six innings.

"(Three-hundred wins) is there, but I don't know that it's prevalent yet," Glavine said. "It's not the kind of thing I'm consumed with. I don't think that I will be until I hopefully get to 299."

Last fall was storybook for the Cardinals, capped by a World Series triumph over Detroit. But it's a new season and, remember, it was New York -- not St. Louis -- that won the most games in the National League last year.

"There was a lot of stuff going on (before the game). We're glad that first one's out of the way," the Cardinals' Aaron Miles said. "We got to relive some of the memories, but we're playing baseball now."

New York scored the first runs of the new season in the third inning. With two outs and a runner on first base, the Mets' Carlos Beltran just missed a two-run homer when he mashed a Chris Carpenter pitch that curled just foul down the right-field line.

Carpenter hit Beltran with the ensuing pitch.

Carlos Delgado cleared the bases with a two-run double off the left-field fence that left Cardinals left fielder So Taguchi sprawled on the warning track.

Meanwhile, Glavine was cruising. He allowed three hits through five innings, striking out two and walking none. Glavine, the consummate crafty left-hander, bewildered the Cardinals with his classic ar-senal: slow and slower and all in the right location.

"He was really good tonight. You look at that game, you won't see too many the same speed," the Cardinals' Preston Wilson said.

St. Louis finally got to Glavine when his command wavered in the sixth.

Pinch hitter Skip Schumaker singled and scored on David Eckstein's double into the left-field corner. Wilson followed with a single to center, but Eckstein was gunned down at the plate on the play by Beltran.

Albert Pujols walked, and Scott Rolen was hit by a pitch, loading the bases. Glavine escaped further damage when he got Yadier Molina -- hitting fifth despite a .216 batting average last season -- on a humpback liner to short that ended the inning.

The Cardinals loaded the bases against the Mets' bullpen in the eighth. But Mets second baseman Jose Valentin made a diving stop on a ground ball up the middle off the bat of Rolen, starting an inning-ending double play.

The pomp machine churned full tilt before the game, beginning with the Cardinals' annual rite of wheeling their players out in red and white convertibles for a trek around the field.

Actor Billy Bob Thornton, a longtime Cardinals fan, helped emcee the pregame festivities, during which Cardinal legends were introduced -- Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and Stan Musial -- and the World Series flag was raised.

Finally, it was down to business as Carpenter unleashed the season's first pitch at 7:12 p.m. -- a ball to the Mets' Jose Reyes.

And with that, a new season was under way, and the defending champs had to turn the page on a terrific autumn fairy tale.

One game in the books. A long road lies ahead. That's reality.

To reach Bradford Doolittle, send e-mail to bdoolittle@kcstar.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

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