For fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, one weird side-effect of the San Francisco Giants winning the NLCS and heading to the World Series has been the constant reminder that Edgar Renteria is still playing baseball. Now he's not only still playing baseball—he's appearing in his third World Series.
↵Renteria made his name as a 20-year-old shortstop for the 1997 Florida Marlins—specifically, for driving in the game-winning run in the eleventh inning of game seven of the 1997 World Series. He was solid all the way through that series—appearing in every game he hit .290/.353/.355, scoring three times and driving in three more.
↵In the 2004 World Series, with our own St. Louis Cardinals, Edgar Renteria was one of the only members of that star-studded team who actually hit—he was 5-15 with three doubles and two walks, scoring two of the Cardinals' runs and driving in one more. That offseason he moved to the Boston Red Sox and got his World Series slump a little late—he was a disaster that year, struggling through a much-publicized defensive slump and failing to regain his hitting form from 2003.
↵And now he's back. Renteria, a back-up for most of the season, got a lot of playing time in the NLCS and didn't respond especially well, going 1-16. But you can bet somebody out there—I'm looking at you, Bruce Bochy—is going to look at his career .304 line in World Series play and decide he is exactly the veteran influence the team needs out on the field. So I wouldn't be surprised if he got one final shot at Series heroics next week.