Wow. I've been a baseball fan for almost 40 years, and I have never seen anything like last night's game 6 of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Folks at ESPN and elsewhere had talked about the things that went wrong for the Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and the Cardinals in game 5, when miscommunications led to the wrong relievers being in the game at the wrong time, leading to the Rangers winning, 4-2. Well, in game 6, La Russa's moves largely worked, especially the late ones, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Rangers manager Ron Washington made all the wrong moves. What am I talking about? Let me give them to you one by one.
1) With the Rangers winning 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth inning, Washington takes out starter Colby Lewis and brings in super-reliever Alexi Ogando, who had been struggling in the World Series. Ogando proceeds to walk Yadier Molina, forcing in the tying run.
2) With the Rangers winning 9-7 in the bottom of the 10th inning, instead of bringing back closer Neftali Feliz to finish off the game, Washington goes to Darren Oliver. Darren Oliver????? Yes, we know that St. Louis had two lefthanded batters, Descalso and John Jay coming up, followed by the pitcher's spot (with St. Louis out of pinchhitters). But Oliver - correct me if I'm wrong - has better results against righties! Just a major head-scratcher. And wouldn't you know, surprise, surprise, those two leftie batters both singled to get the Cards off to a fantastic start!
3) After bringing in Feldman to replace Oliver in the 10th, Washington elects to pinchhit for Feldman in the top of the 11th, and bring in Mark Lowe in the bottom of the 11th. Not as obvious a mistake as no. 2 above, but still - Feldman has great stuff, didn't throw that many pitches in the 10th, etc. With a tied game, you could make the case that Washington wanted to be cautios and save Feldman for a possible game 7. But if he had left Feldman in, kept the score tied, with St. Louis's most feared reliever, Jason Motte, out of the game, you had to figure Texas's chances of scoring in the 12th inning or later against Jake Westbrook, who had not pitched in weeks, were pretty good.
You may not agree with me, but anyway you look at it, fortune started to smile on St. Louis, from the 8th inning through the end of the game. Texas had 3 hits in the final 4 innings. Meanwhile, St. Louis, with 3 hits through the first 7 innings, managed 10 hits in those final 4 innings. John Jay, 0 for like 99 thus far in the World Series, had two hits and scored the tying run in the 10th. Everything went the Cardinals way (except for Josh Hamilton hitting a 98 mph fastball with one hand off of one leg for his first home run in 82 ABs in the 10th inning).
So I tend to think all of this leads St. Louis with a major advantage going into tonight's game 7. Then again, I am sort of rooting for St. Louis, though I'm not sure why. Maybe because of Albert Pujols, or Tony La Russa, or Lance Berkman. Maybe because I don't believe in this "Texas deserves to win it because they've never done it before" reasoning (who did people who believe that kind of stuff root for in 2005, when the White Sox who hadn't won in 87 years were facing the Houston Astros who have never won the championship? Shouldn't those people by rights be rooting for the Chicago Cubs to win EVERY year?).
Cruz and Napoli are banged up, Hamilton is still banged up, and oh yeah, the Rangers just last night suffered the most gut-wrenching loss in the history of baseball. Yeah, yeah, I know, they will all say, "oh, we gotta shake it off and play tonight like last night ever happened", but last night did happen, and not too many people have the focus to completely put it out of their mind. As soon as the Cards start doing something positive, you know most of the Rangers are going to be thinking, "oh no, here we go again."
I remember in 1995 watching the Yankees play the Seattle Mariners in the AL division series. After winning the first two games in New York, the Yankees had to try to win one of the next 3 games in the hell-hole known as the Kingdome in Seattle. In the 3rd game, the Yanks had an early lead, only to see Seattle come back and win. In the 4th game, the same thing happened. By the 5th game, I was hoping that an earthquake would come and demolish the Kingdome. And when Paul O'Neill hit a home run early in game 3 to put the Yankees up, did I think, "yeah, here we go, we are going to win this thing!"? No, I thought, "oh no, the Yanks may have a lead, but I know those @#$%^ Mariners are going to come back again!" And what happened? The Mariners did come back and finished off the Yankees in extra innings, in gut-wrenching, agonizing fashion. And here, now, in the 2011 World Series, I'm sure there are a huge numbers of Rangers fans AND players who fear, in their heart of hearts, that no matter what the Rangers do, the Cardinals will come back and beat them. Just in time for Halloween, we have Jason and Mike Meyers combined, in the killer team that wouldn't die, the St. Louis Cardinals.
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