WORLD SERIES CHAMPS

What just happened?

Did the lowest achieving Cardinal team during this millennium just win the first World Series Championship in 24 years?

Wow.

I had a ticket to game 5, which, of course, meant I could go to game 4. For the series clincher, the wife and I headed to find a downtown bar to see if maybe, just maybe, they’d close it out. The line from Hrobosky’s stretched all the way to 7th Street. We were relegated to Dierdorf & Hart’s, which actually worked out really well.

On a night like this, you just want to be around two to three hundred thousand of your closest friends. When they closed it out, everyone left every bar in town, and poured onto the street to watch the fireworks.

I’ve never high fived so many strangers, or been sprayed by so many beers. I’ll bet there was a sea of red from Kiener Plaza to Hrobosky’s and from the Stadium to the Arch.

In the aftermath, most writers wrote somewhat apologetic pieces about the Cardinals getting hot and healthy at the right time, or about the Tigers inability to throw the ball toward a base with any accuracy.

Some have even said the Tigers “gave the Series away." I’m not sure I buy that one either. The Cards hit 29 points higher than the Tigers, and had an on-base percentage 87 points higher than Detroit. The Cards pitched better. The Cards had a WHIP of .91 and an ERA of 2.05. Detroit's WHIP was a rather gaudy 1.40, and their ERA was 3.40.

Isn't that called playing better baseball?

In their four wins, the Cardinals had a baserunner in 25 out of 33 innings, going in order only 8 times in four games. Yeah, the Tigers made errors, but the Cardinals were constantly putting pressure on Detriot, and were in position to take advantage of those misplays. None of the errors by the Pitchers started innings. The Cards had men on when all of them occurred.

The Cardinals made four errors, but they led to only one unearned run. The Tigers offense simply wasn’t potent enough to take advantage of any Cardinal miscue.

The Cards hit better, pitched better, and were constantly putting pressure on the Tigers. That's why they won.

But I have to admit, the Tiger's D was awful. On grounders/bunts to pitchers without visible pine tar on their hands, the Cardinals reached base 4 of 9 times. Their slugging percentage was .667 on those grounders.

A look at a few keys as we move to the off-season.

FORMATS

Many are begrudging the fact that an 83 win team won it all. Piffle, as George Will would say. Baseball is changing. We knew it before the rest of America when, during the last two years, we built a Mercedes of a regular season team only to come up short in October.

Building a winning baseball team is a more complex task now. You have to build a team that can win over the long haul, and during short spurts. You win during the regular season by being consistent, and in the post-season by being dominant.

When Pedro was Pedro, in the late 1990's, no one wanted to face Boston in a short series because of him. The Red Sox only came up short because they had absolutely NO ONE else to pitch.

I won't argue the Cards were a dominant team. I would argue this was a year without a dominant team. There was no Astro team with three amazing starters and the ability to hide a few really weak links. Detroit had four really good starters, but no one who could just shut you down for 8 innings. At least, no one with clean hands.

The Cards pitchers in this postseason were outstanding. The position players were, finally, healthy and playing together.

But in the absence of other dominant teams, it was the Cards ability to play hard without pressing that made the difference for this team. They were able to take their best shot, and play their best baseball in October. Whereas their opponents never found their comfort zone.

We saw that quality in the Cardinals in 2004 and 2005. They were pressing, never finding that groove where they could play their best, or even really good, baseball.

Perhaps the storylines heading to next season will begin to change for each team. Perhaps they’ll learn what we have. Build two teams. One for April to September, and one for October. You’ll need them both.

TONY

Eleven years, seven post-seasons, two NL Pennants and one World Series Championship.

You can say what you like about Tony, but those are impressive numbers. It seemed like everything the man did this postseason worked. It worked so well, I kept waiting for his “I’m Keith Hernandez” moment.

Tony loves to use his veterans. But sometime in September, he realized that Kinney, Johnson and Wainwright were his best options out of the pen. Not that this was a difficult realization to come to.

Thing is, Looper had completely floundered from April through September. I think watching Izzy and Looper fail was liberating for Kinney, Wainwright and Johnson. They took the ball in October with no appearance of nervousness. It’s almost as if they thought, “hey, everyone else is a veteran and they stunk to high heaven; we’re supposed to be worse then them so we can’t fail to meet expectations.”

TLR put his faith in the rookies, and they played nearly flawless baseball.

YADI YADI YADI

The man hit .358 in the playoffs, and led the Cardinals in combined OPS during the series. Every single pitcher gave credit to Yadi for their performance. His gunning down Dave Roberts was a huge play in Game 4 of the LDS, and it seems he hit a nice homer sometime during the NLCS.

Incredible. If they gave a Reggie Jackson Trophy for most outstanding player in the Post-Season, he’d have won hands down. In fact, why don’t they give this trophy? I mean, really, is there anyone in the commissioner’s office in charge of thinking up ways to adapt this sport to a three-round playoff format?

Why do we reward the guy that does well in the NLCS, but not the LDS? Why not an overall award? They gave Eckstein a Corvette for his MVP performance in the World Series, why can’t they give Yadi a Chevy Silverado Truck and call it the Chevrolet/Dodge/GMAC Long Haul Award? Do I have to think of everything?

PINE TAR

You have to love the justice of the pine tar incident. Tony would have gotten roasted had the Cards lost this series for allowing Rogers to pitch. As it is, it’s hard to question Tony’s strategy.

Fact is, fans wanted Rogers suspended for the remainder of the series. It didn’t happen, at least not formally.

Rogers could have pitched on regular rest in St. Louis for Game 5, but Leyland elected to pitch Verlander because he didn’t want to expose Rogers to the atmosphere at Busch Stadium. He'd rather expose a rookie to that atmospher. A rookie that was shaky in his first WS start over a 41 year old veteran. Is there any way he comes to that decision but for the pine tar incident?

Verlander had no command of his pitches, and the Tigers couldn’t recover. If you're Leyland, you have to get that series back home. You have to pitch Rogers in game 5. But, because of the pine tar you can’t. We wanted a one-game suspension of Rogers.

Because they delayed his start one game, we got a six month suspension. I’ll take it.

WEAVER

Take a lesson, Marquis, that’s how you make money in this game. Pitch well, and with a purpose, when the chips are down. Weaver was magnificent in this series. In Detroit he got an ump with a small zone, and couldn’t put any break on his curveball. In St. Louis, he had just the opposite.The result? His first 8 inning outing of the year. Just one more castoff from the superior AL that baffled the AL’s best team. I love typing that.

It’ll be a refreshing offseason. One where we don’t ever have to worry about thinking, what if? Enjoy it. As the past 24 years have taught us, it doesn’t happen often.