Miguel Cabrera didn't waste any time Saturday in St. Louis.
In the first inning, he launched Tyler Lyons' 3-2 pitch onto the grassy knoll beyond the center-field fence at Busch Stadium -- Cabrera's 400th career home run. That moves him past Andres Galarraga for the most homers by a Venezuelan player.
The careers of Cabrera and Galarraga overlapped slightly. Cabrera broke in with the Marlins as a 20-year-old in 2003, the same year that the 41-year-old Galarraga spent with Montreal. But it was a Galarraga homer in 1997 that provided a teenager in Maracay with the most lasting memory of his countryman.
On May 31 of that year, playing for the Rockies in Miami, Galarraga launched one of the longest homers in baseball history -- a ball that landed halfway up the tarped-off upper deck at Joe Robbie Stadium.
A 14-year-old Cabrera remembers seeing the replay, and when he broke into the majors in the same stadium, trying to duplicate the feat.
"Every day, I would look up at that spot and I would try to imagine hitting a ball that far," Cabrera once said. "But I never came close. I tried in batting practice, but never."
He never matched Galarraga for distance -- the Marlins left the stadium in 2011 -- but he's now beaten him on a bigger list.
