Although Darryl Kile’s time with the St. Louis Cardinals was tragically short, he made a big impact during those 2 1/2 seasons. And it was 5,000 days ago today that he became a Cardinal.

Chris Jaffe at Hardball Times has the details about Kile’s successful time with the Astros and his not-so-successful time at all with the Colorado Rockies that brought about the trade.

Which leads us to Nov. 16, 1999—5,000 days ago—when the Rockies cut their losses and unloaded him. They traded him with Dave Veres and Luther Hackman to St. Louis in exchange for four players, the only one of note Jose Jimenez.

Though Jimenez had a few decent seasons as Colorado’s closer, the Cardinals got the better end of this deal. Immediately upon arrival in St. Louis, Kile got to re-experience the wonder and glory of a curveball that actually curved. He won 20 games for the 2000 Cardinals, and followed that up with 16 more in 2001.

And, as we remember all too well even 11 years later, Darryl Kile died on June 22, 2002, at age 33. His last outing for the Cardinals was on June 18, a victory that put them into first place, which they held for the rest of the season.

Yet those aren’t the only milestones in Cardinals history that are part of today. Here are some other significant events that occurred, which you can read more about in Jaffe’s post at Hardball Times.

• 1969: Maybe Bob Gibson’s  best game – a 13-inning complete game with over the Giants in which he allowed one earned run, six hits, walked two and struck out 11.
• 1968: Another Gibson milestone (gee, from that year? Imagine!) As Jaffe writes: “It’s the tenth game in a ten-start stretch in which he allows two runs. Not averaging two runs—allowing a total of two runs! His line in this time: 10-0, 90 IP, 51 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 12 BB, 75 K for a 0.20 ERA.”
• 1964: Ken Boyer’s last grand slam, which was the seventh of his career.
• 1958: And even more Boyer history — he received a walk-off walk, the only one of his career, in a 5-4 win over the Reds.
• 1949: Stan Musial hit his 100th triple.
• 1948: Joe Medwick played his final game.
• 1933: Frankie Frisch made his managerial debut, as a player-manager.

Also on this day, though not Cardinals-related but still very cool, was the home run Roberto Clemente hit in 1956 that Jaffe describes as “the most awesome home run of all-time: An inside-the park walk-off grand slam. He hits it off Jim Brosnan for a 9-8 Pirates victory.”

(Yes, even just an inside-the-park homer or a inside-the-park walk-off would be tremendous. So “most awesome” is definitely accurate.)

Today also is the anniversary of something you’d like to forget you ever knew of or heard: when Roseanne Barr sang butchered the National Anthem before a San Diego Padres game in 1990.