Linebrink. (Photo by B.J. Rains)

By Rob Rains

JUPITER, Fla. – One of the first players that David Freese said hello to when he walked into the Cardinals’ spring training clubhouse on Tuesday morning was pitcher Scott Linebrink.

The two have met before – sort of.

Last May 1, when Freese was batting in the sixth inning for the Cardinals against the Braves in Atlanta, a fastball got away from Linebrink and hit Freese on his left hand. X-rays revealed that the hand was broken and Freese went on to miss the next 51 games before he was able to play again on June 28.

“He rested me up,” Freese said with a smile on his face.

That one plate appearance was the only time in his career Freese has faced Linebrink, the newest addition to the Cardinals’ bullpen corps after signing a non-roster contract days before spring training began. The two, once connected by that one pitch, now find themselves seven lockers apart.

“I went up and shook his hand and kind of apologized for what happened,” Linebrink said Tuesday. “It was one of those things that just happened. There was no malicious intent or anything. You certainly don’t want to put anybody out of the game for an extended period of time but I did tell him I felt I had to take a little bit of credit for his postseason run because I was able to get him rested during he middle of the season.”

The Cardinals, with a group of young right-handers, were looking for a more established veteran to join the mix this spring and settled on the 35-year-old Linebrink, who has pitched for six teams during a 12-year career which began with the Giants in 2000.

It was the collapse of Linebrink’s Atlanta Braves last September which coincided with the Cardinals’ rally at the end of the season which helped put them into the playoffs – setting the stage for the memorable postseason by Freese and company.

“It was like watching a three-week-long car wreck in slow motion,” Linebrink said of the Braves collapse, when they lost nine of their last 12 games, including the final five games. “It was terrible. It was a lot of things – we were losing late-inning leads, we had games where we just flat out got beat. We felt like we were snake bit. There were walk-off homers and blown saves. We felt like nothing could go right.

“There is something to be said about the team that gets hot at the end of the season and for us it was just the complete opposite. We just had to win a couple of games, and as it got closer to the end of the year, we had destiny in our hand. We had to win one, and we just couldn’t get it together.”

As the Cardinals played the final game of the season in Houston, the Braves were at home against the Phillies. If both teams won there would have been a one-game playoff in St. Louis the following day to determine which team advanced to the postseason. The Cardinals beat the Astros, then watched on television from the clubhouse as the Braves’ game went into extra innings.

With the game tied 3-3 In the 13^th  inning, Linebrink came on to pitch. With one out, he walked Brian Schneider, then retired Jimmy Rollins on a fly to center. On a 3-2 pitch, Chase Utley singled, and then came the at-bat which Linebrink remembers all too well – Hunter Pence coming through with a single on a 2-2 pitch that put the Phillies ahead and produced cheers of joy in the Cardinal clubhouse.

The Cardinals remember being one strike away from losing the World Series, but the Braves and Linebrink were one strike away – twice – from sending game 162 to the bottom of the 13^th still tied, and maybe finding a way to stop that St. Louis postseason run before it ever started.

“It was an inning where I just battled,” said Linebrink. “Pence was a hot hitter at the time and we buried a two-seamer in on his hands and he just bled one out there. The infielders were positioned just right and he got a hit and was able to saunter on down to first base. It was one of those helpless feelings where you felt like you did everything you possibly could do to execute the pitch. He didn’t get a good piece of it but it just didn’t work out. That was kind of the story of our September.”

At the time, of course, Linebrink was not thinking about changing teams over the winter and would end up signing with the Cardinals. He first began thinking that in December, when he attended a Pro Athletes Outreach conference and spent time with friends Adam Wainwright, whom he had met through previous conferences, and Lance Berkman, his former teammate on the Astros.

“St. Louis was the team I really wanted to go to, because I have always had a lot of respect for the Cardinals and I love the city,” Linebrink said. “It’s a great baseball town.’

So he asked Wainwright and Berkman to put in a good word for him with Cardinal GM John Mozeliak, which they did, and a few days before spring training began a deal was finally struck. Linebrink and his father jumped in the car and drove from Texas to Jupiter, where the two have been hanging out at the beach and going fishing after the Cardinals workouts.

It was Wainwright, of course, who also had lobbied Mozeliak to sign Berkman in the winter of 2010 after he had met and gotten to know him through Pro Athletes Outreach, a group of Christian athletes.

“Lance told me Adam had a lot to do with his signing here so Adam was one of the first guys I went to,” Linebrink said. “I figured he had to be in somebody’s back pocket. Both guys made calls for me, and I am very grateful about it. Adam is a great standup guy and I am excited about being his teammate.”

Linebrink, with 607 games of major-league experience, also is excited about sharing his knowledge of the game with all of the younger relievers on the Cardinals. It was a role he saw former teammates Robb Nen, Billy Wagner and Trevor Hoffman fill when he was younger, and a role he also had last year in Atlanta.

“I was honored to be around those guys, and I took different lessons from each of them — mainly how to be a professional,” Linebrink said. “They all said you had to discover for yourself what you need to do to be successful.”

It was something another veteran pitcher, Chris Carpenter, said already in this camp which was one of the more valuable pieces of advice Linebrink said he has ever heard.

“Chris said it best in the team meeting the other day, about maintaining focus all season long, even in spring training,” Linebrink said. “He said the work we are doing now is going to stay with us in the beginning of the year, the middle and the end, when it really matters.”

Like in game 162.

………