Pete was two years behind me at Stanford, and like a lot of you, I have great memories of watching him play in a Cardinal uniform. I was court-side in Maples for the 48-point massacre of UCLA, along with pretty much every other home game of Pete's career. I was in Tucson for the game that ended Tim Duncan's college career. Most memorably, I was in St. Louis for the Rhode Island game, which is clearly the greatest moment in the last 70 years of Stanford men's basketball. On the court Pete was a glue guy and a winner, a player who was equally willing to draw a charge or take and hit a big late three.
I didn't know Pete personally at Stanford, but I do have one indelible memory of him to share, from well before either of us enrolled at Stanford.
In the spring of 1988, Pete and I were kids growing up in the St. Louis suburbs. I was 13, and he was 11. We didn't really know each other, but his dad, a high-ranking executive for the Cardinals, was a friend of my dad. On Opening Day 1988, my mom pulled me out of middle school at around noon and told me that we were going to the Cardinals game. Already, this was the best day of my short life. I had never been pulled out of school before, and not only were we going to see the beloved Birds, we were seeing their first home game since the heartbreak of the 1987 World Series, a seven-game loss to the Twins.
For those of you too young to remember, the Cardinals were a special baseball team in the '80s; taking advantage of the Astroturf at Busch Stadium, they played an incredibly exciting brand of baseball based on speed and defense, built by Hall of Fame Manager Whitey Herzog, and featuring Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee and Vince Coleman.
Soon after I left school that day, my fortune got even better. Not only were we going to the Cardinals game, we had seats, with the Sauers, in one of the stadium's luxury boxes. I was introduced to Pete and his younger brother, and they offered to give me a behind-the-scenes tour of the stadium. We seemed to go just about everywhere except the locker rooms. The ushers just waved us through, since they knew the Sauer kids. I remember that Pete was already taller than me and already really into basketball; he and his brother told me about a hoops court underneath the baseball field at Busch, where they sometimes went to shoot. Pete, his little brother and I wound up watching the late innings in their dad's box seats, a few rows back from home plate.
The Cardinals ended up losing the game, but it didn't really matter. I had seen Ozzie do his trademark back-flip, and witnessed the team getting their National League championship rings. I don't remember any details of the game, but according to Retrosheet (
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1988/...LN1988.htm), the score was 4-3, Barry Bonds had two doubles, Bobby Bonilla homered, and Ozzie Smith stole two bases. After the final out, as the Cardinals were shuffling into the clubhouse, 11-year-old Pete Sauer walked down to the railing by the dugout and asked the usher who was standing guard there if he could do him a big favor. Apparently this usher also knew Pete. "Could you grab the lineup card off the wall of the dugout for me?" Pete asked the guy. Remarkably, at least to me, the usher pulled down the lineup card, and gave it to Pete, who then turned and handed it to me.
This was the lineup card that Whitey Herzog himself had filled out earlier that afternoon! In black marker, Herzog had recorded the starting lineups for both teams. Coleman led off for the Cards, of course, and a young, lean Bonds hit in the #1 hole for Pittsburgh. Now this was mine! To keep! At this point there was no question this was the greatest day of my 13-year-old life.
I hadn't asked Pete if he could get me the lineup card, or any other souvenir; I wouldn't have dreamed of asking such a thing. But he knew it would mean something to me, so he just did it.
Pete obviously had a very privileged upbringing (as did I). But unlike so many kids who come from money, he wasn't full of himself, and he was kind, and he understood how lucky he was. At least that was true of Pete as an 11-year-old, and I have no reason to think it ever changed.
By the way, I still have that line-up card. Of course I do. It's just about the only physical possession from the 1980s that I've held onto for all of these years.
