Champions!

If you are reading this blog (and haven't stumbled across some strange link or misplaced address), you know that I've followed the Cardinals since I started following baseball, which was about '87 in the passionate form that I have today, though I do have a few earlier baseball memories.

What I didn't have, until this week at least, was a memory of the Cardinals winning the last baseball game of the season. And when this postseason started, I wouldn't have thought this year would have been any different.

And yet it was. So wonderfully, wonderfully different.

My initial Series wrapup can be found at the Clubhouse, and I've promised Roark over there that I'll do a more comprehensive view/summation of this improbable season and post-season later on. I've not sat down to do that yet, but this entry may be my jumping-off point.

This was a team with only 83 wins to its credit in the regular season. Its two immediate predecessors had won 105 and 100 regular-season games, respectively, but then were swept in the Series and lost in the NLCS. So why, how was this team able to succeed when other teams weren't.

One of my good Clubhouse friends and moderators makes the argument that the reason they hadn't won in the past was they were too tight, that Tony LaRussa's stiff style of preparation took the fun out of things and had them pressing. Perhaps. They did go into this postseason in the underdog role, which was a first for a LaRussa squad. They knew they had nothing to lose, and so they weren't worried about losing it. That may be part of it.

I liked the story I read about Jim Edmonds starting the practice of giving out game balls after Ronnie Belliard's amazing bases-loaded dive and stop of a ball in Game 1 of the NLDS against San Diego. A little extra leadership, bringing the team together? Maybe that was a portion of the difference.

The biggest part, I think, was that the injured players were out of the way. LaRussa didn't have to worry about bringing in a hurting Jason Isringhausen in a key situation and hoping he could get out of it. Izzy was on the DL and not available. They didn't have to try and see if Mark Mulder had anything left. Mulder was on the DL. They got Scott Rolen to get a cortizone shot and then, intentionally or not, got him riled up with a benching. He got a hit in every game after that Game 2 sitdown and I personally thought he should have been named MVP, though David Eckstein did a great job as well.

Without those injuries and ineffectiveness, the Cards might have been more of a 90-92 win team, which is nothing to sneeze at. Even that last losing streak of the year, when they were conjuring up comparisons to the '67 Phillies, they were playing competitive baseball and having something go against them, unlike the long losing streaks earlier in the year when they were just getting shelled.

The pitching won this for the Cards, which is appropriate. The Cardinal tradition is not big home run hitters, Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols excepted. The Cardinal tradition is pitching and defense, the fundamentals, and that's what won this series for them.

This is their 10th World Series win. And all of them have come since the Cubs last won one of their own. Not that Cardinal fans are counting, of course.....