Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals!

[TedEbear]

Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals for being the 2011 world champions!  With 11 World Series wins they are only second to the Yankees in wearing the crown.

And this year wasn't just about winning it but rather how they got there:

1. The Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of making the playoffs in late August.  Just about everyone, including myself, had given up on them for the season. 

2. With 5 games to play in the regular season they were still 3 games out of the playoffs.  Thanks to a monumental collapse by the Braves and an incredible late season run by the Cardinals they snuck in as the wild-card by winning the last game of the regular season.

And then there was the World Series:

1. The Cardinals mowed down the top two National League teams – first the Phillies and then the Brewers - to reach the WS. Never mind that those two teams won a collective 18 games more than the Cardinals during the regular season.

2. The Game 3 WS 16-7 score blowout saw Big 'A' Albert Pujols swing into history with 3 home runs, tying Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson as the only other two players to have ever done it in a single WS game.

3. Game 6 was arguably the best WS game ever played.  The Cardinals were down 2 runs and their final strike TWICE in the 9th and 10th innings and rallied to win it.

And how about David Freese?  He won both the NL championship MVP as well as the World Series MVP for his heroic efforts.  He became the first player in WS history to tie the game in the bottom of the 9th inning and then win it with another hit in extra innings. Among other things he got a shiny new Corvette. 

He went to Lafayette high school, about 2 miles from where I live.  After the final out of Game 7 it sounded like New Year's Eve in my neighborhood.  People were yelling, banging pots and pans, shooting off fireworks, etc.  I grabbed my moose horn out of the closet that I traditionally only blow on New Year's Eve and made some noise on my front porch.  No one cared that it was 10:30 p.m.

What a team, what a time, what a town!!!  Thank you, St. Louis Cardinals for the most exciting baseball season I have ever witnessed.