Thursday, October 27, 2011

Wow! I just watched the best World Series game I've ever seen! That includes the Oakland A's win with Reggie Jackson's three home-runs, and all the previous series games since 1966. The Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals battled into extra innings, with Texas up three games to two at the start of the sixth game of the World Series. And for 8-and-one-half innings it looked like Texas would put the series away, chalking up runs each time the Cardinals threatened to claim the lead. The Cardinals players looked slow, sloppy and unsure, while the Texans, for the most part, looked BIG, and confident and their pitching was much crisper than the Cards'.
But both teams managed to accumulate three errors apiece, and at times it looked like rookie baseball out there.
Texas built a 7-4 lead in the seventh on back-to-back home-runs by Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz, and Ian Kinsler added an RBI single.
Texas had silenced the noisy Busch Stadium crowd with a two-run lead going into the ninth, when the Red Birds, in typical Tony La Russa fashion, clawed out a two-run inning to tie the game, 7-7.
With two outs and two strikes on batter David Freese, Texas was one strike away from winning the series. But Freese slapped an improbable triple to right field and knotted the game up.
In the top of the 10th, Texas' Josh Hamilton crushed a two-run homer to put the Rangers up again, 9-7. And, again, it looked bleak for the Cards.
But in the bottom of the 10th, Lance Berkman slapped a 3-2, two-out pitch to the fence, a two RBI single that tied the game a second time.
The top of the 11th saw the Texans finally go cold for an inning and retire, still tied with St. Louis.
Then, in the bottom of the 11th, Freese walked to the plate, dug in, and smacked a solo home-run to straightaway center field to win it, 10-9.
Twice the Cardinals looked like they would lose by two, and twice they came back to tie the game. Finally, Freese's homerun nailed it down for the Cards.

And there was a lot of brinksmanship going on in the Busch Stadium dugouts, with both coaches shuffling players in and out of the lineup, angling for an edge.  
The first seeming death-knell for the Cardinals came in the seventh, when Texas' Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz hit back-to-back homeruns, putting Texas up 6-4. Texas scored another run in the inning, putting them up 7-4 by the time the eighth inning rolled around.
But then La Russa replaced the non-hitting, error-prone outfielder Matt Holliday with Allen Craig in the eighth, and Craig promptly homered to cut the Texas lead to 7-5. 
Later, down by two runs in the ninth, the Cards tied it up. And they did it again in the 10th, after Hamilton's soul-sucking homerun. Amazing!

The drama, the excitement, the electricity in the stadium literally flooded out of the TV set. I'd bet that the energy was palpable across the world for anyone who listened to or watched the game. That's one I'm glad I allowed myself the time to watch! Great ballgame, just great! Hollywood couldn't write an ending as unaccountably magical as that! Wow!
And so, World Series game 7 continues tomorrow. It might be interesting.

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