The Mets are in town this week and while there is plenty to write about with this Redbirds team, I feel more inclined to reflect on a night that forever changed the landscape of our former NL East rival, but also the LaRussa era of Cardinal baseball.
Say what you want about the final out of the ’06 World Series, of course it was great. I remember hugging strangers, acting like my hair was engulfed in flames and almost disbelieving the site of our team winning it all, but it paled in comparison to the events of only a week prior when our team recorded a victory nobody could have scripted.
The Cards and Mets renewed their previous divisional rivalry that year on a stage unfamiliar to St. Louis and to the National League. The teams opened their NLCS with rare (and perhaps never again) center stage treatment. While Detroit and Oakland battled for the American League crown that week, the Cards and Mets received the media spotlight as Buck and McCarver got the assignment from Fox.
To say the Mets were the favorites would be an understatement. We all know how the Cards limped into the playoffs, winning just five more games than they lost that year. What bears repeating is the fact the Mets, winners of a MLB-high 97 games, were clearly the team that was most worthy of representing the National League.
This set the stage perfectly for us as the Cards sought revenge from the 2000 NLCS that saw our vastly superior regular season team succumb to a group of outlaws lead by Benny Agbiani and Tsuyoshi Shinjo who dismantled the favorite Cards in five quick games.
Karma reared its familiar head just prior to the start of the series as the Mets, not the Cards, were faced with untimely injuries to the pitching staff. While the Mets were forced to deal with the prospect of winning a seven game series without Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, the Cards were, for the first time all season and unlike all playoff campaigns prior, completely healthy.
After splitting the first two games at Shea with the help of late inning heroics from Spiezo and So Taguchi, the Cards handled their business winning games three and five at home.
Talk everywhere centered around the fact that no team coming home down three games to two (as the Mets did) ever won game six without also winning the decisive game seven.
I remember that ominous historical fact as we sent Carpenter to the mound against an overmatched John Maine in game six…and lost.
The stage was set for game seven.
The Cards were faced with the near-certainty of another post season letdown. Having lost three league championship series over the past five seasons while now fielding a team that was clearly only a shell of its lone World Series appearance two years earlier, it was clear this could be our last shot at a world championship.
Jeff Suppan pitched a gem for the Cards, Oliver Perez threw the game of his life for the Mets, but both pitchers left the game with the outcome undecided.
The ninth inning produced the most memorable 28 minutes of my life as a Cardinals fan.
Scott Rolen, just one at-bat after the punch-to-the-gut fly out to Endy Chavez, singled off Aaron Heilman. On the next pitch, Yadi hit a ball about ten feet further than Rolen’s sixth inning shot that landed in the Cards bullpen and suddenly our unlikeliest of hitters had delivered the biggest home run of the year.
As heart-stopping as any Isringhausen appearance from the bullpen was that year and continues to be this year, nothing was ever more gut-wrenching than Wainwright’s ninth inning.
The first two batters in the Mets’ ninth singled, Wainwright was hanging pitches and every ’86 Shea Stadium World Series moment seemed likely to be revisited as Mets and Cards fans prepared for the inevitable.
After striking out Cliff Floyd and getting Jose Reyes to line out to center, Wainwright walked Paul Loduca, loading the bases and bringing Carlos Beltran to bat.
So, at the plate stood the guy that single-handedly forced the ’04 NCLS to go seven games, gave Julian Tavarez the idea to punch a dugout phone (thus breaking his hand) and carried the Astros to the World Series the following year.
Just three pitches later, Beltran’s knees buckled as he looked at a curveball right down the pipe that is forever stained in Cardinal lore.
The rest, of course, is history. The Cards carried the momentum into the World Series against Detroit, won their tenth world championship and are a re-born team likely headed back to the playoffs just two years later.
The Mets, in contrast, didn’t make it back to the playoffs the following year, fired their manager last month and appear destined to finish no better than .500 this season with a roster drenched with overpaid, under-performing All-Stars.
Weird how one game can change the landscape of a franchise, isn’t it?
Thank God Beltran took that third strike.
J Carnage has not since drunk an entire bottle of Korbel like he did that night. He welcomes reader’s tales of post-game bad decisions at
JCarnage24@yahoo.com