No Blues in St. Loo

Let’s see if I can wrap my hands around what’s been happening in St Louis these past few days. The baseball contingent of that fair city with the arch once again refused to lose to a Texas Rangers team that kept putting runs on the board all the way through the 10th inning.

When the Rangers finally came up short in their half of the 11th, the Cards finally put them out of their misery in the bottom half, hometown boy David Freese laying down the hammer with a walk-off homer to center, this after he had tied the game at nines in the bottom of the ninth with a 2-out 2-strike triple to right over a flailing Nelson Cruz.

If the St. Louis fans weren’t crazy enough after tying the Series in miraculous fashion in Game 6, they got to enjoy watching Chris Carpenter, their ace throughout the post-season, really and truly squelch any hope the Rangers may have still had . As a bonus, David Freese once again was the hero at the plate, immediately taking Carpenter off the hook with his 2-run tying double in the bottom of the first. The hometown boy became the MVP of course and that arch looked as shiny as it ever had as St. Louis celebrated late into the evening.

If it had been just a few heroes who came through for the Cards, acknowledged stars like Pujols, Berkman and Holliday, it would have been a good thing surely. But this Cards team was so much more than that. There was Freese of course. But there were also guys, young and old alike, named Allen Craig and Rafael Furcal, John Jay and Nick Punto. Skip Schumaker and Yadier Molina, Daniel Descalso and Ryan Theriot, all turning in whatever they could whenever they could.

And they had done it since late August, coming back from 10 ½ back to capture the wildcard, then whipping the Phillies and all their aces in the NLDS, the Brewers and all their sluggers in the NLCS before finally extinguishing those Texas Rangers’ hopes.

Then, as if basking in the light of that Cards magnificent championship, the lowly Rams, that town’s NFL entry, a team that hadn’t managed to win a game all year, slugged out a convincing victory over the team that had been Super Bowl champions as recently as two years ago. They did it with their reserve quarterback and one Steven Jackson, one of the finest running backs in the league when healthy.

Those Rams made the Saints look like, well, themselves at their worst. Drew Brees was terrible. The Saints couldn’t run the ball, the Saints couldn’t pass the ball, and, just when it looked as if the Saints could mount one of their patented comebacks, the Rams said “I don’t think so” and intercepted Brees to extend their unlikely lead even further to 31-14. The Rams would not return home on empty that day. They looked a lot like their baseball brethren, refusing to lose, especially after that fine start.

So, if you’re into baseball, you’ve got to like the Cardinals. If you live in St. Louis and are into baseball, you’ve got to love them. Yeah, Pujols may not return, manager LaRussa is retiring and who knows what else the fates may hold in store for them, but those St. Louis fans will remember this 2011 group for a long, long time.

But now you can be a Rams fan too. Perhaps all they needed was an inspiration, the kind of inspiration only a team such as that Cards team could provide. A lot of teams have talent. All they lack is the will to win. Those Cards had that in their back pockets with their chew.

Maybe that Cards glow will fade in time, but the Rams were on fire on Sunday. They were as determined as they’d been all year. Run the ball, no problem, Steven Jackson alone garnered 159 yards all by himself. Stop the run, no problem….they gave up fewer than 60 yards. Defend the pass, they’d do that too with an interception that was run back for that final TD that put the Saints to bed.

Society being what we are today, not many analysts gave the Rams any credit for the victory, it was too much fun to batter Brees and the Saints. It wasn’t Jackson who excelled, it was the Saints failure to tackle. It wasn’t newly-acquired Brandon Lloyd getting wide open in the end zone, it was lousy coverage by the Saints. It wasn’t a tough D that stopped Brees cold…..well, you get the idea.

Even the greatest Rams fan of all, my brother, had given up on his favorite team by Week 8. He’d been disappointed for too long. He’d seen enough from what had become a totally uninspired group of football players on both sides of the ball. The Rams averaged fewer than 10 points scored while usually surrendering 30 or more.

Ironically, he had picked the lowly Jaguars to cover against the Texans (a push, as things turned out), but he wasn’t quite ready to spend any more love on a Rams team that had shown nothing since the final exhibition game. The same man who had garnered hope from every conceivable Rams indication of talent for seven weeks had finally given up.

What he hadn’t figured on was lightning in a bottle, a city brimming with admiration for its baseball team, hometown heroes making good, and unlikely candidates thrusting themselves into the heart of the fray. He hadn’t figured on the Rams wanting some of that too. He hadn’t figured on that Cards winning glow rubbing off, affecting even those lowly Rams, a team that had seemed impervious to even any suggestion of hope before Sunday.

I’ll bet there had been no room for blues in that St. Louis locker room on Sunday. That Rams football team came to play. Forty-five guys were saying ”Give me some of that”.

The End of Baseball

What could be better, a nice fall day (but not nice enough to have to work too much), a personal computer, a word processing program from 2007, a fantasy football show on the tube and the prospects of watching a World Series Game 7, if Tony LaRussa can just shut up and manage like a regular human being.

And Terrell Owens is making news again. You have to admire his tenacity. And he says he likes fantasy football too and he’s got Drew Brees and Ryan Fitzpatrick as his quarterbacks. All right, T.O.!

I love these NFL replays too, best thing next to the Redzone and the mute button. The NFL Network has been showing the Jets-Chargers and now it’s the Vikings-Packers on the air. The Jets, as much as they drive me crazy with their acerbic personalities, were actually good. They ran the ball, they passed the ball, they got turnovers, they were pretty impressive.

And C, the Vikes rookie QB, was really impressive against the Super Bowl Champions. Especially his first-drive bomb to Michael Jenkins that went for a TD before the refs took it away and awarded them the ball on the 1. Do officials ever do anything that isn’t friggin’ annoying?

The Series Game 6 scheduled for tonight may not be played. That’ll be good too, providing a perfect opportunity to watch “Inside the NFL”. Besides, maybe it’ll give Carpenter a chance to pitch again. That’d be interesting. That man is tough. There’d be nobody I’d rather have going for me in a Game 7.

But will the Rangers allow it? I don’t know. Right now, in this Series, they look like the team that does it all, especially in the power department. Since they decided not to pitch to Pujols, things have been looking decidedly better for the guys in red. And you had to love Derek Holland’s impersonation of manager Ron Washington taking him off the mound after his masterly performance in Game 4. These Rangers are a team that deserves to win.

But that doesn’t mean that the Cards don’t deserve to win it. You just get the feeling that the MO, momentum, has definitely gone to Nolan Ryan’s side of the ledger. (I wish he wouldn’t hang with Dubya though). Holliday has to start making the Rangers pay for avoiding Pujols. It looks as if he’s trying too hard. But he’s come through in the past in the post-season and Lance Berkman ain’t exactly chopped liver either.

But things are setting up for the Rangers. What must the Cards be thinking? How confident do they feel after the fluky sound problems that beset them yesterday? Even if you don’t blame anybody particularly for putting in the wrong relief pitchers, it’s a pretty big gaffe for a major league team in a World Series.

Other things weigh in the Rangers favor too. Their relievers are rested, their hitters seem confident and they’ve got the hot manager now. Ron Washington has been rock-steady at the same time as he jumps up and down like a little kid. The man’s got personality. And he makes the baseball moves that regular human beings make.

But, truth to tell, more of my attention is on the football action around the NFL , if only because my fantasy team hangs on in first for one more week, this despite getting almost nothing from about six different players in the lineup. Bye weeks can be a terrible thing but Drew Brees, even for three quarters, can make up for a lot of deficiencies in other areas.

You have to be lucky though. I’ve said this before but all that stuff about making your own luck is vastly over-rated. I’ve won one weekly contest by one point and another by about 3 along with the most curious set of circumstances one could possibly imagine.

I just learned that it’s snowing in the Denver area and all that weather is heading for St Louis, and not only that, but it’ll probably be headed our way too over the weekend. I’m not quite ready for any skiing in October. Let’s at least have Halloween first.

The Football Giants should be entertaining this weekend too. They get to play the worst team in the league this week, the Miami Dolphins. They’re coming off a nice performance against Buffalo but that game followed a horrible team performance against Seattle. That’s what bugs me about football. You can get totally inexplicable game results, as was Sunday’s Ravens debacle against the Jaguars.

I was away for the Giants woes against Seattle but everything I read indicates that both Seattle QB’s had pretty good stats and Eli Manning threw 3 interceptions on the day, the last one ensuring the Seahawks the victory. The Buffalo victory, while impressive, came against a Bills defense that was all banged up.

Now they play Miami, a desperate team for a win, and, judging by their Seahawks performance, I’d say anything’s possible. But the G-Men will probably emerge victorious. It’s a really good thing too, because their succeeding six games are really tough ones….at New England and San Francisco, then home against an out-for-revenge Eagles team, then at the Saints, home vs. the Packers and at Dallas.

If they win 2 out of those 6, they’ll be lucky. I see the G-Men being at 6-6 after their game against the Packers. They’ll then have to finish strong against their division opponents, Dallas (twice) and Washington, around a home rivalry game with the Jets.

If the Giants win a playoff berth, they will have earned it. The Jets seem to have an easier road, facing the rest of the NFC East and their own division rivals. I think that if the Jets can dominate the Bills, they’re pretty much assured of at least a playoff spot. The Pats are still the favorite to win the division.

It’s the best time of the year, even if it will be the end of baseball.

Small-Ball Prevails in Series

It’s interesting to look back sometimes on these posts of mine to see where my mind was a week ago and where it is now. In my last column that was almost two weeks ago, I reflected on the Cards being the team to beat, that it was the Cards who had all those no-name guys who would hurt you.

Since then, the Cards did manage to make the Brewers look awful and then took Game 1 of the Series behind a lot of pitching and one of those no-name guys, one Allen Craig, who hit a little flare to right against Alexi Ogando, a Texas guy much too fond of his fastball, to drive in the winning run in the Cards 3-2 victory against the Rangers in St. Louis.

But, last night, the Rangers showed that they could play some small-ball too. Rangers second-sacker Ian Kinsler got a hell of a jump on Cards closer Jason Motte in the 9th and just got his hand in to touch the corner of the bag ahead of Rafael Furcal’s swipe tag. Cards catcher Yadier Molina made the perfect throw but it wasn’t enough to nail Kinsler.

Then, a guy named Elvis Andrus kept the line moving along with another single, sending Kinsler to third and taking second on the somewhat-muffed relay. All of a sudden, it was second and third and nobody out. Both runners would wind up scoring on sac-flies from Hamilton and Young and that was it for the day as far as scoring would go. Rangers closer Neftali Feliz made sure of that.

So the American League entry can play small-ball too. They’ve also got some guys who can hit in the clutch, some guys who can steal bases and play defense too. Their shortstop Elvis Andrus made one play that looked impossible and another that just was as fine a play as you’ll ever see.

Until that ninth inning, it looked as if the Cards would once again employ the same method of destroying an opponent’s will as they had been doing all the way down the stretch of the regular season, take the lead and trot out one fine reliever after another to shut down that opposing offense.

If Kinsler didn’t steal second, if Andrus didn’t take second on the throw, the Rangers would have been down 2-0 in games on their way back to Texas. But they put the pressure on, they hung tough, much as the Cards had been doing with regularity. The Rangers got the big hits and made the big plays. Momentum now has to favor the Rangers. They beat the LaRussa formula.

That Neftali Feliz looked so unhittable in the ninth didn’t hurt either, as far as inspiring confidence in the Rangers’ chances. Feliz was the man, not Motte. The Rangers won’t fear Jason Motte anymore.

I had been thinking the Cards still had an advantage in starting pitching, if only because they had three lefties going against all those right-handed hitters of the Cardinals, especially Pujols and Holliday. But, a quick look at the split-stats for Matt Harrison, the Rangers lefty who’ll be starting Game 3, shows that he’s better against righties than lefties, in terms of opposing batting and slugging percentages. The Rangers could easily take Game 3.

Derek Holland, Game 4’s probable Rangers lefty starter, may have a lot more trouble against that Cards right-handed lineup. I’d imagine the Cards would tie the Series up in Game 4 at two apiece. He’ll be facing Edwin Jackson for St. Louis, someone who has been effective all year but with limited experience in the playoffs. If the Cards did lose this one, they’d be down 3-1 in the Series, an event that these Cards won’t let happen.

Game 5 should also go to the Cards as Chris Carpenter is a much better pitcher than he has shown thus far in the first game. Facing C.J. Wilson again, who I thought pitched over is head in Game 1, Carpenter should send the Series back to St. Louis with the Cards holding a 3-2 lead.

Then it’ll be Garcia-Lewis again in Game 6 in St. Louis. The Rangers obviously won Game 2 with the same SP matchup so it’s not inconceivable that, with the Rangers’ backs firmly against the wall, as they were to a lesser extent last night, the Texas contingent can tie the Series at 3 apiece, setting up still another Harrison-Lohse matchup in Game 7.

Your guess is as good as mine as to which of these two tough teams will take that one. Whatever happens though, it’ll be a team that can play small-ball, good defense, steals, taking the extra base and getting tough at-bats in tough situations.

The weather has negated the power of both these teams so far, both games in St. Louis having been played in weather in the 40’s with a stiff wind. Pujols’s drive especially last night would have soared out of the park on any normal baseball night.

The Rangers definitely broke through in a big way with last night’s come-from-behind win. They beat LaRussa’s formula, they beat their feared closer, they fielded the ball better and they were better on the basepaths. They have the closer to watch out for now. They have more experience in the playoffs and they’ve had their taste of failure in last year’s World Series vs. the Giants.

That’s a lot of advantages, a lot of stuff that’s hard to evaluate. I now think that the only way the Cards win this Series is if they take 2 out of 3 in Texas, a tough test against this Rangers team that loves to play at home, a fact that I heard Josh Hamilton re-affirm today, and in just about those same words.

Of course, there’s also NFL football still rolling along. The Jets, borderline sociopaths all, will lose to the Chargers if there’s any justice in this world. The Giants should have their way with Fish.