ROBERT MACLEOD, Globe and Mail The zaniness of the World Series will continue tonight in St. Louis at Busch Stadium.
For those of you who went to bed earlier on Thursday night, secure in the knowledge that the Texas Rangers had secured their first ever World Series championship, you missed one of the all-time crazy finishes in what has been a memorable showdown in baseball’s pinnacle event.
The Cardinals, twice down to their last strike, rallied each time to tie the game and then won it on Davie Freese’s 11th-inning home run drive that provided St. Louis with an improbable 10-9 victory.
The heart-thumping victory tied the Fall Classic at three-games apiece, forcing a Game 7 showdown on Friday night.
The Cardinals became the first team in World Series history to score in the eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th innings.
The Rangers will send Matt Harrison to the mound hoping to salvage their wounded pride on Friday.
The Cardinals have not announced a starter but it is expected to be ace Chris Carpenter, who would be pitching on three days' rest.
The Rangers thought they had this one gift-wrapped on several occasions, enjoying a three-run lead in the seventh, a two-run lead in the eighth, a two-run lead in the ninth and another two-run lead in the 10th.
Each time the Cardinals rose from the grave before Freese’s dramatic homer won it to send the series to a Game 7 for the ninth time in the past 30 years and for the first time since 2002 when the Los Angeles Angels prevailed over the San Francisco Giants in Anaheim.
It would appear that history is on the Cardinals side Friday night to capture their 11th title as the home team has prevailed the last eight straight times in World Series Game 7s.
The eight-year absence of baseball's ultimate game is the longest since the championship series began in 1903. The Cardinals hold the record for most World Series Game 7s, going 7-3.
The biggest question heading into the game is how the Rangers will bounce back psychologically from the devastating Game 6 setback.
“It’s really tough,” Rangers reliever Darren Oliver said. “We’ll just go home and get some rest and come back home tomorrow. You can’t change what happened.
“You've got to finish off a game, and we didn't do it,” Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton said. “We've got to put our emotions aside. We've got a job to do. Obviously, we wanted to come out on top [Thursday] tonight, but we're not going to lose any sleep over it. We'll shake this off and come back tomorrow.”
While the Cardinals are seeking their 11th title, the Rangers are going for the first in the 51-year history of the franchise, which began as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961. The team moved to Texas for the 1972 season.
“The experience of Game 7,” St. Louis manager La Russa said, “is something they'll never forget.”
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