Cardinals Fulfill Destiny

After the way the St. Louis Cardinals rallied to defeat the Texas Rangers in Game Six of the 2011 World Series we all should have been believers.

The Cards were riding the wave of too much karma to think they would fall short in Game Seven after that. Comeback after comeback when they were one strike away from losing the Series twice, only to flip the score around on the Rangers should have told us that the Cardinals were a sure-thing on the last night of the baseball season.

They were.

Game Seven wasn’t really even close, with the Cardinals continuously pecking away and the Rangers pitchers wilder than spring break in Florida. Final score X-X without a late-inning charge necessary. We are always obsessed with who is the favorite in a big sporting event, but this is why they play the games out. Not even Tony La Russa’s closest relatives would have gone on record on Sept. 29 predicting that the Cardinals would win the World Series. They probably would not even have gone on record predicting the Cardinals would make the playoffs.

Just to make the playoffs on the last day of the regular season the Cardinals needed the Atlanta Braves to fold up neater than a letter being shoved into an envelope. Thank you, Braves. That only bought them a match-up against the Philadelphia Phillies, the team widely considered the best of the league in the pre-season and throughout the regular season. But Philadelphia couldn’t put the Cardinals away. On to the Milwaukee Brewers, the team from their own division that won six more games than they did during the regular season. The Cardinals took care of them, too.

Quite the achievement making it to the World Series as the National League representative given those other contenders. But surely this was the end for the Cardinals. The Rangers had the big bats necessary to club away at the Cardinals’ s0-so group of starters and their bullpen. After losing in the Series in 2010, the Rangers had the motivation to whip the Cardinals and capture the first World Series in club history.

With a 3-2 margin by Game Six, it certainly appeared as if the Rangers were about to end the franchise’s 51-year drought without a title. They were ahead 7-5. They led by those two runs with two outs in the ninth inning, only to have the Cardinals tie it. Undeterred, the Rangers led 9-7 in the bottom of the 10th inning, only to have the Cardinals come back again. Then in the 11th inning the Cardinals won it, 10-9.

Still, you had to wonder if the Cardinals had exhausted their momentum, or their energy, just to survive. Wouldn’t have been at all surprising if the Rangers blew them out in Game Seven. But it was the Rangers, not the Cardinals, who imploded. When you walk a run in with the bases loaded in the seventh game of the World Series, you are treading on thin ice. And when you also hit a batter with a pitch with the bases loaded in the seventh game of the World Series, you deserve anything you get.

Props to La Russa for this triumph. He used the entire Cardinals roster to swat away challengers in each round of the playoffs. Anyone with the slighest acquaintanceship with Major League baseball knows how great Albert Pujols is. But it’s doubtful the majority of fans living outside of St. Louis could name about a dozen of the guys on the Cardinals’ roster who played serious roles in the Series or playoffs.

Unlikely Most Valuable Player David Freese, Allen Craig, Lance Lynn, Jason Motte, Marc Rzepcynski, Daniel Descalso, and Mitchell Boggs introduced themselves to the world, several in unforgettable ways. The Cardinals hustled, scrapped, displayed heart, determination and remained unflappable when trailing in games or in a series.

Nothing could rain on the St. Louis Cardinals’ parade and that’s why they’ll be having one to celebrate the 11th World Series championship in club history.