World Champion St.Louis Cardinals
Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?
On Friday night the Cardinals finished off one of the most spectacular comebacks in baseball history and won thier 11th World Championship and thier 2nd title in the last 6 years. Both of the Cardinals past 2 titles have been somewhat improbable. In 2006 they barely made it in after blowing a huge lead in the division. No thought an 83 win team would do anything in the playoffs. A few weeks later after taking out the Padres and the Mets, the Cards finished off the Tigers for title #10. In 2011 The Cards were all but done in late August 10.5 games out with only a month to go, it would take a miracle for them to make the playoffs now.
But that's exactly what happend. The Cards came back, the Braves fell apart and on the last day of the regular season, the Cards won the NL Wild Card. They then went on to take out the Phillies in the DS, then took out the Brewers in the NLCS to make it to the Fall Classic for the first time since that magical 06 season.
The World Series this year was absolutley amazing. A 7 games series that saw a record breaking performance by the best player in the game, a remarkable comeback in Game 6, and of course the Cards winning it all in game 7.
Game 6 was pretty amazing, the Cards were down to their last strike, down 2 runs, with Neftali Feliz on the mound who had not blown a save at all in the postseason. I had started thinking to myself "well it was still a good year, we made it all the way to the World Series, still a pretty good year for the Cards". But then David Freese, the hometown kid, the guy that has been so clutch all postseason long. He hits it out to deep right, at first I thought it was a fly out that Cruz was gonna catch easy, and then I saw Cruz going back and back and then finally, I see the ball go past him and to the wall, as soon as that ball hit the wall I knew the game was tied. I started jumping up and down, nearly screaming at the TV, GO, GO, GO! Then cheering and nearly waking up everyone in my house (I was the only one awake at the time) as Pujols and Berkman scored the tying runs. Then there was the Hamilton home run, and once again I thought Game is over.
I should have known better,
These are the Cardinals, the same Cardinals that came back in the Wild Card, the same Cards that came back an inning before when no thought they could. They did it again in the 10th as Lance Berkman came up big with the game tying RBI single. Then in the 11th it was Freese again who hit the game winning homer to send this unbelievable World Series to a game 7.
Game 7 for the most part was actually the last dramatic of all the games. The Cards got a great outing from Carpenter, solid relief from the bullpen, and Freese and Craig with big hits. It didn't really sink in for me until there were 2 outs in the 9th, seeing David Murphy come to the plate, seeing the Cards getting ready to storm out of the dugout, it finally sunk in "This is actually happening, the Cards are about to win the World Series." Sure enough Murphy hit a fly to left, Allen Craig caught it, and Cardinal Nation celebrated as the World Champions of Baseball.
Now we get ready to go into the offseason, Free Agency begins offically this morning, the Winter Meetings will soon be here, and Pitchers and Catchers report in about 106 days. I can't wait for that of course, but at the same time, I think i'm going to enjoy this offseason. Seeing how the Cards re-sign Albert, and move pieces around, it'll be interesting to see what happens. But for now I'm just sitting back, remebering the year that was in baseball and enjoying the fact that the Cardinals are the Champs.
World Champion St.Louis Cardinals, love the sound of that.
-Matt
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