The Reds had this one salted away. St. Louis was down to its final out with Cincinnati sitting on a 5-4 lead, and then the wheels came off in the outfield. A routine fly ball turned into chaos when two Reds outfielders converged on it and let it drop untouched, and suddenly the Cardinals had new life.
The clip shows the Reds' two outfielders colliding on coverage as the ball hits the grass, then Cardinals players mobbing the dugout railing as the score flips from 4-5 to 6-5.
That miscue didn't just tie the game, it flipped it. Once the door was open, St. Louis kept walking through it. Alec Burleson came up in the middle of the outburst and delivered again, sliding in safely and pushing another run across with the Cardinals now up 6-5 in the top of the 9th.
Burleson slides into third as the scoreboard shows Cardinals 6, Reds 5 during the ninth-inning rally.
By the time the dust settled, what should've been a routine Reds win had turned into a full-blown pile-on. St. Louis kept adding runs in an inning that had no business still being played, and the scoreboard kept climbing well past the tying run.
Another Cardinals runner slides home as the broadcast scoreboard shows St. Louis 9, Cincinnati 5 in the top of the 9th.
The Cardinals ultimately scored six runs in the frame to take a commanding lead, and they needed every bit of it. Cincinnati didn't fold quietly — the Reds answered with four runs of their own in the bottom of the ninth, including a two-run single, to make it a nail-biter before St. Louis finally closed it out 10-9.
It's the kind of game that gets filed under 'wildest of the season' the moment it ends. The Reds had a grand slam earlier in the game to build their cushion, and it still wasn't enough once the outfield miscommunication opened the floodgates in the ninth. For a Cardinals team looking for any spark in a long summer, stealing a game like this off a defensive blunder and a late-inning onslaught is exactly the kind of win that can change momentum for a series.