Time Has Flown for Spiezio

(Busch Stadium) The St. Louis Cardinals honored their 2006 World Series Championship team on Saturday, celebrating the 10th anniversary of their win with a motorcade around the warning track and pregame ceremony. Scott Spiezio was among those who made it back for the festivities.

“Doing all right,” said Spiezio. “Just hanging out with my kids–I’ve got four kids now. I’m in a small town, I’m in the middle of the woods in a small town. I’ve got 20 acres of corn. It’s not like playing in front of 46,000 people but I try my best. I been giving some lessons here and there, I’m just kind of looking for my next chapter of what I want to do. I don’t want to travel yet because of my kids but once they get older, I think I’d like to get back into baseball.”

Spiezio was at Busch Stadium a couple of years ago, sharing then that he was walking a path of sobriety.

“I probably went almost 12 months and then had a bad night,” he shared. “It’s a battle. It’s an every day battle.”

But unlike in the past, before he openly shared and talked about his battles, Spiezio now realizes and feels the support of the many pulling for him.

“That’s the great thing about this city–it’s a big town, but it’s a small town atmosphere,” he said. “They pull for their players and they love us and we love them. The letters that I got, just the support I got was incredible. Not only from teammates and fans, but everybody around the league. Angels, Seattle, Oakland, my ex-teams and stuff like that. Players reaching out that I didn’t even know. It was pretty neat. I can’t say that I’m perfect, but I’m doing way better than I was.”

So while he may not be at 150 days and counting, Spiezio is still on the right track.

“Yeah, I feel good–well, I’m feeling old,” he joked. “I had a hip replacement two years ago…I always say it’s from stealing too many bases, but nobody believes me.”

When suggested that it was maybe triples rather than stolen bases, Spiezo laughed.

“I don’t know how I did it–but it’s luck. I had a couple in a row and they were big, but if you look at all my triples in my whole career, I probably had more at the end of the 2006 season then I did total.”

Now ten years later, those from the 2006 squad posed together to recreate the photo they took in the clubhouse after winning the championship. For Spiezio, the time has flown by.

“The thing is, it’s like you leave off the last time you see them it’s like you just talked to them yesterday,” he said. “You can bring up conversations–remember that time, remember this. Everybody still remembers pitches, plays. It’s just really neat. We were such a close knit group. We really cared for each other–we would die for each other. That’s why, even though we didn’t win that many games, when it came down to brass tacks, we were going to be there for each other and we were going to do whatever it took to win or were going to leave it all on the field.

“We had some great leaders. Tony and Jim Edmonds stepped up. We had some guys out of nowhere just come up–Anthony Reyes coming out and winning Game 1. Weaver. Wainwright coming in and being our closer. So Taguchi. Belliard. Kinney. Just one after another, guys stepping up. We just closer and closer and it was a really neat team to be a part of.”

photo credit:  Bill Greenblatt/UPI