It's been 34 years since the Pittsburgh Pirates last won a postseason series. Thanks to earning a Game 3 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2013 National League Division Series however, the Bucs are now one win away from erasing a long history of failure. Hosting Game 4 of the NLDS in front of what will certainly be a raucous crows at PNC Park, the Pirates will send veteran Charlie Morton to the mound against rising rookie Michael Wacha of the Cardinals. Morton - back from 2012 Tommy John Surgery - hopes to knock out a Cardinals team that has enjoyed a tremendous level of success against him over the years but notes that he'll only be successful as long as he isn't pressing too much over one of the biggest games in Pirates history.
"Anybody would like to believe that from failure, you take something," Morton, who has a career record of 2-9 in 14 starts against St. Louis, said recently. "And I think that's true with anybody, whether it's a season or a span of starts or it's one start. So there are things that I'm going to take from it and I'm going to learn from, but I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel because I had a couple of bad games against them. If you look at the game you're going to throw as an important game, it's an important game. A lot rides on every game we play. Our careers depend on it. We need to be consistent."
Morton finished the 2013 regular season with a 7-4 record that included a 3.26 ERA in 20 starts. While he is certainly capable of lifting Pittsburgh to the 2013 National League Championship Series, St. Louis rookie Michael Wacha has other ideas.
"It's definitely been a crazy past year," Wacha, a rookie from Iowa City said recently. "Whenever I came to Spring Training this past season, the goal was to get up here to St. Louis and help them win some ballgames. So I wouldn't really say whenever I was in college my junior year that I would ever have thought of this. But I just look at it as an opportunity to take advantage of. I'm really excited about being able to pitch in the postseason."
The pitching match-up certainly creates the potential for a fantastic game between a Pirates team looking to move on to the next round and a Cardinals club desperate for a return trip to St. Louis.
NLDS Game 4: Cardinals at Pirates - DATE, TIME & TV INFO
DATE: Monday, October 7
TIME: 3:00pm
TV COVERAGE: TBS
LIVE STREAM: CLICK HERE
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