New Story Line---The Cards are good.

Is it happening again? Is the entire sportswriting world falling in love with a story line, only to watch it collapse? Are we witnessing another UT/USC or Rams/Patriots?

The world expected an easy Tiger win. What happened?

Justin Verlander gave up a homer to Scott Rolen, who has no left shoulder. Then they pitch to Pujols, but because they have no idea who he is, the pitch him away, and he takes a fastball over the rightfield wall.

Reyes had an outing I haven’t seen all year. This wasn’t like the White Sox game. There, he simply overpowered the Sox. Here, he didn’t have overpowering stuff. His fastball was clocked between 86 and 90. His change was 74-78.

But Reyes relied on his late movement on his pitches to get a lot of popups and grounders. Reyes sometimes will try to nibble at the corners, but tonight, simply let it fly. It was enough. The late movement kept the balls from being hit hard. Tons of popups and weak grounders.

So now everyone gets to say that the Tigers were stale. Yeah. That’s it. The Tigers haven’t faced live pitching in a week, so they would suck against anyone.

That’s crap.

First, if it were true that you needed to see live pitching, what the hell was stopping the Tigers from seeing it? They had a week. Dust off Robertson and Bonderman and let them throw. They could easily have made their starts in the Series and thrown a batting practice session or two. If the Tigers had needed live bp, they could have had it.

Fact is, the Cards were ready for Game 1, the Tigers were not. Fact is, this series feels different than any other series I’ve seen. The Cards are finally playing their best baseball when it counts. Something they’ve not done since the 1980’s. It’s refreshing to see. Liberating, in a way. We know we’re seeing our best shot. We’re not going to beat ourselves. Someone will have to beat us.

How's that for a story line?

Shannon was on the air after the game, and he was a little upset about the lack of respect the Cards have gotten. He pointed out that we do have Pujols, Edmonds, and Rolen in the middle of our order. Sure, they’ve had a bad year, but if they are healthy, you should fear us.

I’m not sure this is a matter of health. The Cards have found a comfort zone. They can play hard without pressing. The Tigers seemed off-balance last night. As the game wore on, they started getting themselves out at the plate, and making errors in the field. Were they pressing?

It’s not easy to play well on the big stage. Just go back in time to 2004 and ask Rolen, Edmonds and Pujols.

So now we face two lefties. We made the Oliver Brothers (Darren and Perez) look like world beaters in the NLCS. Now we get two Yankee beaters in Nate Robertson and George Clooney, or is it Kenny Rogers? The one who doesn’t sing, or address the UN.

We counter with Jeff Weaver, unless TLR takes my advice, and starts Ankiel.

I could type for hours about our ineptitude against lefties. But we’re going to see our squad at its best.

So bring us your lefties. They’re the best in the AL. But we get to watch our best play them.

Win or lose, that’s enough for me.