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Emotional Cardinals honor Oscar Taveras before home opener
The memory of Oscar Taveras weighed heavily on the minds of the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday as they took the field for their 2015 home opener.
A video memorial to Taveras, considered one of baseball's brightest up-and-coming young talents, was shown on the scoreboard at Busch Stadium prior to the game's first pitch. Taveras, 22, and his girlfriend Edilia Arvelo, 18, were killed in a car accident on Oct. 26 in the Dominican Republic. It was later revealed that Taveras was driving drunk at the time of the crash.
USA Today's Bob Nightengale was on the scene and got the reaction from a visibly emotional Cardinals team:
"It's as choked up as I've ever been on a baseball field," [Adam] Wainwright said. "I wasn't expecting to do that. It's like it doesn't seem real until it is."
"It was hard, just so hard," said Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter, who arrived 6 1/2 hours before the game. "It's sunk in. It's like everything just reset itself. It's like, man, you're watching highlights of a guy who was your teammate less than a year ago. You're starting a game, and he's not here. You couldn't help but get emotional. We all were."
"I got teary-eyed watching that," Cardinals veteran reliever Randy Choate told USA TODAY Sports. "It was like when I first heard the news. I just broke down. It wasn't like we were that close or anything, but he was a teammate. You remember him hitting a homer in his first at-bat. You remember that homer against the Giants. You remember everything about him. I mean, he was just 22. He was a kid."
Right-hander Carlos Martinez is wearing Taveras' No. 18 as a personal tribute to his best friend, while every Cardinals player is sporting an "OT 18" patch on his uniform sleeve this season.
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Israel Fehr is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at israelfehr@yahoo.ca or follow him on Twitter. Follow @israelfehr
