Instant Classic: Cardinals Force Game 7 After Two Comebacks, Walk-Off Homer

Yesterday I got a big pile of mail, held while I was away. The best piece was this (which I ordered through regular channels):

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We had Joe Buck. Much of the rest of the world had Gary Thorne. Gary Thorne’s pretty good.

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For years after -- and still to this day, to some extent -- the Giants would play the home run in promos and ads. Snow did a mini-Fisk, willing the ball fair with his left arm. Every time I saw it, I wanted to grab my TV by the lapels and shake it. They lost that game, you idiots. They lost!

I still feel that way. It was a great moment in Giants history, but it wasn’t a great three hours and 41 minutes in Giants history. There are better things to celebrate. But in my haste to dismiss that moment, I made the mistake of dismissing one of the greatest moments in World Series history. Ever since the 2000 NLDS, I tarred the Carlton Fisk home run with the same brush of sticky-loser tar. They lost that World Series, you idiots. They lost! How was that something to celebrate for decades and decades?

There were two points in Game 6 at which I seriously questioned Ron Washington’s judgment.

Still, when a team loses like the Rangers lost ... actually, nobody’s ever lost a World Series game like the Rangers lost Game 6. Still, it’s appropriate to review the events because ... well, because that’s what we do. Our National Game has many charms, and one of them is questioning a manager’s judgement after a close loss, whether it’s a small game in May or a massive game in October.

I’m thinking of one of those big spinning wheels like you see in TV game shows. One of those big spinning wheels with pegs on them, and a bunch of different, I don’t know, wedges that say different things. You know the things I’m talking about. I don’t know what they’re called, and I refuse to look it up because I’m in a lazy and stubborn mood, but I’m going to go with “pegwheel”. I’m thinking of a pegwheel.

Thursday night’s World Series Game 6 was basically a spinning pegwheel. There was no telling where it was going to stop, and just when you thought it was finished, it moved a little more. The thing went past the next peg. This is the third time I’ve used the word “thing” in two paragraphs.

How do you write about Game 6 of the 2011 World Series? There are all sorts of angles to take. So many angles. They’re all squiggly tailed ideas, poking around an unfertilized egg of understanding. The egg was also the best baseball game most of us will ever see. The ideas are bobbing and weaving, trying to get in. There will be a writer somewhere who gets it right. The resulting article will be a star-child, floating in the heavens like the baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And after we read it, we still won’t have any idea what in the hell just happened, just like in 2001. This is bigger than all of us.

Every baseball game has what-ifs. Every single World Series game that’s ever been played was festooned with what-ifs. Should Manager Q have gone with Player Y? Should he have pinch-hit there, bunted there, brought in this reliever, that reliever, left in the starter too long, not long enough?

And boy did David Freese look like an idiot after that popup. Prior to the late-inning heroics on Thursday night, Freese was, at least partially, the goat for the Cardinals. But this was the lasting memory of Freese at the time:

Not the way anyone wants to be remembered in a World Series. Two hands!

It’s counting outs time for the St. Louis Cardinals. They entered the bottom of the eighth with six outs left to get three runs. Every out they made would be a self-inflicted body blow, each one more painful than the last. And they made three of those outs in the eighth.

But they did get a run back! Which is nice. Allen Craig, would-be postseason legend if things had played out a little differently, sent a Derek Holland pitch into the left-field seats:

Nope, not Alexi Ogando. He’s yesterday’s news.

Derek Holland. He pitched so brilliantly in Game 4, and -- thanks to the extra day off, which by the way was supposed to help the Cardinals more than the Rangers -- now Holland has come out of the bullpen to record four big outs.

The first six innings of this game ranked among the worst six consecutive innings of Major League baseball I’ve ever watched. Not in terms of excitement - they were very exciting - but in terms of quality. The pitchers were sloppy. The hitters were sloppy. The defenders and the baserunners were sloppy. The managers were sloppy. The first six innings of this game supplied an absolute treasure trove of writing material for the aftermath.

An alternate explanation is that Tony La Russa finally figured out that Holliday was singlehandedly trying to sabotage all the Cardinals’ grand plans. He has been so bad!

You could watch that video as is, or you could take the extra step and watch it the way nature intended.

So Lewis gave way to Alexi Ogando, who walked in a run to tie the game.

And in the third inning, Pujols drove a fat pitch to the warning track in left field.

The key for Colby Lewis tonight -- and whenever he pitches, really -- is keeping the ball in the yard. This season he gave up 35 home runs during the regular season, tops in the American League. And he’s now given up four home runs in four postseason starts.

a. Have Lewis take every pitch until he walks or strikes out

b. Have Lewis bunt

c. Have Lewis swing away

Every National League-watching goof from Hawaii to Maine would pick “b.” It’s not that we’re bunt fetishists ... it’s just what we’re conditioned to expect. If a pitcher comes up with fewer than two outs and a runner on, he’s bunting.

Garcia’s pitch count is up to 59 and the Cardinals’ bullpen has been active, but we’re sitting on a tie game in the bottom of the third.

Jaime García has thrown 49 pitches already. If he’s still around in the fifth, it’ll be an upset.

It’s an early lead for the Rangers, but they’re probably just a little disappointed with how the rest of the inning turned out.

Rain is headed to the St. Louis area Wednesday afternoon and evening and according to the National Weather Service forecast, there is an 80% chance of rain throughout the day.

To translate a bit from the 140-character limitations of Twitter, “Mo” is Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak and “1 o’clock” is Central time, so for those of you on Eastern time, it’ll be at 2 p.m. ET.