Why a first trip to St. Louis is special to Peña

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat publication. To learn the total publication, click here. And subscribe to get it often in your inbox.

Astros shortstop Jeremy Rock had by no means stepped foot in St. Louis previous to the workforce’s arrival for a three-game collection in opposition to the Cardinals earlier this week. However the journey was kind of a full-circle second for the Peña household. Peña’s father, Geronimo, performed six of his seven large league seasons with the Cardinals, and Jeremy would put on one among his dad’s No. 21 Cardinals jerseys when he was in highschool.

When Peña arrived at Busch Stadium previous to Tuesday’s collection opener, it didn’t take lengthy for him to be reminded of his father’s taking part in days in St. Louis, which got here earlier than he was born.

“The very first thing that occurred to me once I walked in, the clubbie got here as much as me and he was speaking to me about my dad,” Peña mentioned. “That’s fairly cool, as a result of I by no means actually had a connection to folks that performed with my father till final 12 months.”

Geronimo Peña was a reserve second baseman for the Cardinals from 1990-95, ending his profession in 1996 with 5 video games with Cleveland. He performed alongside Corridor of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith within the ultimate few years of Smith’s profession, posting an .863 OPS in 1992 and .823 in 1994. He by no means appeared within the playoffs, so Jeremy received bragging rights as a rookie when he was named MVP of both the ALCS and World Series whereas serving to Houston win the World Sequence final 12 months.

“Not solely is he a very good baseball participant, however he’s turned out to be a really well-versed younger man,” Smith mentioned. “He’s received good genes, and also you knew with the way in which his father performed, some child from our technology was in all probability going to come back up and do properly like Ken Griffey [Jr.] did together with his dad, and it’s good to see a father-son mixture have profitable large league careers.”

Clips of Peña’s large moments within the postseason are simple to search out on the web. However discovering video highlights of Geronimo’s profession with the Cardinals? Nicely, that takes some analysis.

“It’s powerful to search out video from again then should you weren’t Barry Bonds,” Jeremy mentioned. “My older brother, he discovered a full sport the place one among his teammates [Mark Whiten] hit four homersso that they posted the entire sport [online] and my dad occurred to be taking part in that sport, so we watched the entire sport. That was my first time seeing him play. We discovered a few different video games in opposition to the Reds the place he hit a house run, a few different video games he received a few knocks.”

Within the second sport of a doubleheader on Sept. 7, 1993, in opposition to the Reds, Whiten whacked 4 house runs. In actual fact, it was a smiling Geronimo Peña – who went 1-for-3 with stroll and a run scored – who bodily pushed Whiten again onto the sphere from the dugout following his fourth homer to acknowledge the cheers from the group at Riverfront Stadium.

And what similarities did Jeremy see when watching pops?

“I really feel like we each had ugly jogs,” he joked. “He was an enormous dude, greater body than I’m. I discovered the sport by means of him.”

Peña and his dad are extraordinarily shut and nonetheless talk about baseball usually – and St. Louis nonetheless comes up in dialog.

“I do know he beloved it right here, so now I’m going to go try a few totally different spots and ask him for spots that he went to when he was taking part in right here and see in the event that they’re nonetheless open and go verify them out,” Jeremy mentioned.