SAN FRANCISCO • The major league game was on television and in the ninth inning when Class AAA Memphis manager Stubby Clapp asked pitcher Jack Flaherty for a moment Wednesday afternoon. Pitcher Luke Weaver, a Redbird not too long ago in the same rotation as Flaherty, had just entered the game as a pinch-runner.
Clapp “called him an athlete,” Flaherty recalled.
Then the manager told Flaherty he could call Weaver a teammate again.
“I called mom,” Flaherty said.
As part of the Cardinals’ 48-hour retooling of the roster, Flaherty will make his major league debut Friday at AT&T Park, starting in place of the traded Mike Leake and doing so just six weeks before his 22nd birthday.