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The two-game sweep by Cincinnati was tough, but now the Phillies faced a harder challenge as the league-leading, reigning world champion St. Louis Cardinals arrived in town. Phillies ace Satchel Paige started the first game against the Cards’ lefty Harry Breechen. Gibson got the scoring going with a smash into the left field seats in the second, driving in two. Del Ennis (pictured below) doubled and scored on Paige’s single into left-center to make it 3-0. Benson’s RBI single in the sixth added one more and a sac fly by Ennis made it 5-0. Brown’s triple off the wall in Shibe Park’s deep center field scored two more in the seventh.

Paige allowed his first baserunner—a hit batsman—in the third, but the Redbirds failed to score. After none of the Cardinals got a base hit through seven, the excitement began to build in the stands. Former Phillie Danny Litwhiler reached on an error in the ninth and Paige walked the dangerous Stan Musial intentionally. With two on and two out, Paige threw strike three to pinch hitter John Cappa to complete a no-hitter against the best team in baseball. Phillies fans went wild, but even beyond that Paige had proved that a black man could stand against the best players in baseball and not only compete, but dominate.

Barnhill started the first game of a doubleheader then next day and the Cardinals finally got a base hit in the third inning. The game remained scoreless until the fifth, when Barnhill walked in a run and gave up one more on Buster Adams’s single to center. The Phils got one back in the bottom of the inning when Dandridge scored on a wild pitch from starter Harry Gumbert but remained behind, 2-1. Litwhiler drove in two more in the sixth after Barnhill’s error kept the inning alive. Verdell Mathis pitched the eighth and ninth without giving up a run, and the Phillies scored two in the ninth to make it 4-3, but they could not push the final run across and went down to a narrow defeat.

Half an hour later, Podgajny started game two. Catcher Ken O’Dea gave the Cardinals the lead with a two-run homer in the second and Ray Saunders hit a solo shot in the third, part of a three-run inning that made it 5-0. Dandridge got the Phillies on the board with an RBI triple in the fourth. Hilton Smith gave up two more runs in relief in the sixth, and the game began to look like a blowout. The Phillies scored two in the seventh, but a wild pitch from Tiant in the eighth made it 8-3 Cardinals. The home team inched closer when Campanella knocked in two on a double to deep center in the eighth and Northey doubled home two more with a clutch pinch hit. That chased Howie Krist from the game and made it 8-7 going into the final frame. Si Johnson pitched a scoreless top of the inning, but the Phillies could not score and dropped another one-run contest.

The no-hitter had been an historic and thrilling event, but the series was otherwise disappointing for the Phillies as they dropped two of three.