Unbelievable WS Game 6: Cardinals Beat Rangers 10-9, Even WS at 3-3
Cards refuse to die, Freese's HR in 11th forces Game 7
CBSSports.com wire reports
ST. LOUIS -- Twice down to their last strike, the St. Louis Cardinals kept rallying to win one of baseball's greatest thrillers.
David Freese completed a startling night of comebacks with a home run leading off the bottom of the 11th inning to beat Texas 10-9 on Thursday, and suddenly fans all over got something they have waited a long time to see: Game 7 in the World Series.
"You had to be here to believe it," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said.
It was as great a game as baseball has ever witnessed, rivaling the Carlton Fisk homer in Game 6 of the 1975 Series and Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 Series.
Great, that is, except for Texas. The Rangers were that close to their first championship.
"I understand it's not over till you get that last out," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "I was just sitting there praying we got that last out. We didn't get it."
Next up on Friday night, the first Game 7 in the World Series since the Angels beat San Francisco in 2002.
Freese, the hometown boy who made good, had already written himself into St. Louis lore in Game 6 with a two-strike, two-out, two-run triple in the ninth off Rangers closer Neftali Feliz that made it 7-7.
"Initially I was like 'Are you kidding me? My first AB off Feliz in this situation ever,' " Freese said. "I just beared down, got a pitch to hit. Initially I thought I hit it pretty good, I thought [right fielder Nelson Cruz] was going to grab it, so just a lot of emotions on that one."
After banged-up Josh Hamilton hit a two-run homer in the Texas 10th, St. Louis again tied it when Lance Berkman hit a two-out single on a 2-2 pitch from Scott Feldman.
Busch Stadium was still in frenzy when Freese opened the 11th with a leadoff shot over the center field wall off Mark Lowe. Freese thrust his arm in the air as he rounded first base, and the crowd was delirious.
"Just an incredible feeling, seeing all my teammates at the dish waiting for me," said Freese, whose shirt was torn off during the celebration.
A night that started off terribly for both teams turned terrific for everyone watching.
After it was over, La Russa wasn't willing to announce his starter for Game 7 -- many believe it will be ace Chris Carpenter on three days' rest. Matt Harrison is set to start for Texas.
Home teams have won the last eight Game 7s in the World Series, a streak that started with the Cardinals beating Milwaukee in 1982.
Texas trudged off the field as Freese circled the bases after connecting off Lowe, having been so close to that elusive title. Much earlier, team president Nolan Ryan was high-fiving friends in the stands as Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz opened the seventh with home runs that helped Texas take a 7-4 lead.
Allen Craig's solo home run in the eighth began the Cardinals' comeback. Jake Westbrook wound up with the win.
Hardly the ending anyone imagined in a game that started out with a bevy of errors and bobbles -- none more surprising than the routine popup that Freese simply dropped at third base.
"I'm just glad I had a chance after I looked like an idiot on that popup," Freese said.
The Cardinals made it 4-4 in the sixth when Alexi Ogando relieved starter Colby Lewis and walked Yadier Molina with the bases loaded.
Then came a key play -- Napoli and Beltre teamed up to pick off Matt Holliday at third with the bases loaded.
With one out, Napoli zipped a throw to Beltre, who neatly used his cleat to block the diving Holliday from reaching the base. That also ended Holliday's night with a severely bruised right pinkie.
Texas wasn't quite out of trouble as Nick Punto walked to reload the bases. But Derek Holland, the star of Game 4 with shutout ball into the ninth inning, trotted in from the bullpen and retired Jon Jay on a comebacker.
The Rangers looked loose as they took the field for pregame warmups. Cruz playfully kicked a couple of Cardinals gloves strewn on the grass, and smiled at his St. Louis pals.
Once they started, however, both Texas and St. Louis seemed tense, as if they were trying too hard with so much at stake. Either that, or they looked like they were playing in the sloppy weather that forced Wednesday night's postponement.
Exacerbated by the errors, the teams seesawed through the early innings.
Texas did more damage in three batters against Jaime Garcia than it did in seven scoreless innings against him in Game 2, with Hamilton hitting an RBI single in the first.
St. Louis came out swinging at first pitches, and Berkman's two-run homer into the center field bleachers made it 2-1 in the bottom half. Ian Kinsler tied it in the Texas second with an RBI double. Garcia was pulled after the third in his shortest outing since June 2010.
Shaky in the field all year, St. Louis made two errors in a span of four batters in the fourth behind reliever Fernando Salas, equaling its mistake total for the Series.
Holliday failed to take charge on an easy fly ball by Cruz and dropped it for a two-base error. Napoli followed with an opposite-field single to right that hit the chalk line for his 10th RBI of the Series. Salas then sailed Lewis' bunt into center and Napoli turned his left ankle as he went leg into the bag on the play. Napoli was checked, and was OK.
The misplays continued in the Cards fourth when first baseman Michael Young made an errant throw to Lewis covering the base, letting Berkman reach. Molina's RBI grounder made it 3-all.
The next botch belonged to St. Louis. Hamilton lifted a major league popup in the fifth that started foul, drifted fair and was dropped by Freese. Young took advantage with an RBI double for a 4-3 lead.
Notes
Texas was 0 for 11 with two outs and runners in scoring position in the Series until Kinsler's double. ... Berkman hit his first Series home run. He was moved up a spot to cleanup for this game. ... David Eckstein, MVP of the 2006 Series for St. Louis, threw out the first ball. ... Ninety-year-old Hall of Famer Stan Musial rode in on a golf cart during pregame festivities. ... The crowd of 47,325 was a record for 6-year-old Busch Stadium.
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We just watched the ugliest, greatest game of the World Series
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist
ST. LOUIS -- History will say this is wrong. History always does. Tell yourself you've watched the greatest game in your life, maybe the greatest game in anyone's life, and history will smack you down. A better game will come along, or worse -- the thrill will fade. So consider yourself warned: The St. Louis Cardinals' 10-9 victory in Game 6 of the World Series wasn't the greatest game in baseball history, or in your own personal history.
Unless it was.
You think I'm going to tell you it wasn't? Hell no. I'm not saying a thing in the negative about this game, which was the most perfect World Series game since Don Larsen set down 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. That was a perfect game, true. But this was the perfect game.
It had everything -- good and bad and ugly -- and that was just in the first handful of innings. And then something happened, and this game became beautiful -- probably in the seventh when the teams stopped making errors and started hitting home runs. But then it became incredible, probably in the ninth when the Rangers moved within one strike of their first World Series title in franchise history, and the Cardinals rallied to force the 10th inning. And then the 11th.
And then when it ended in the 11th with a bolt of David Freese bat speed, with Freese homering to center and Busch Stadium exploding for the third time in three innings -- so loud that I couldn't hear the sound of my own screaming voice -- this game became perfect.
Just about everyone who played was a goat. And just about everyone who played was a hero. David Freese, to name one. He's the guy who dropped a routine pop-up in the fifth, allowing Josh Hamilton to get on base. Hamilton would score, so that run was on Freese. But then Freese saved the Cardinals' season in the ninth with a two-out, two-run triple that forced extra innings. And he won it in the 11th with the home run.
Matt Holliday, to name another. He screwed up Nelson Cruz's easy fly ball to left in the fourth, letting it fall for an error. Cruz would score, so that run was on Holliday -- who also was picked off third in the sixth, gutting a bases-loaded rally. But that was after he generated a run by barreling into Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus at second, breaking up a double play in the fourth and saving an out the Cardinals needed to score that inning.
Texas had its heroes and goats, too. Adrian Beltre was useless for three at-bats, then hit a home run in the seventh. Nelson Cruz followed with a home run and it was 6-4 Rangers, soon to be 7-4, and this game seemed over -- and it would have been, had Cruz tracked down Freese's triple in the ninth. Hero. Goat. All of it. All over the place.
The managers were doing crazy, crazy stuff. Ron Washington broke about 14 rules of baseball when he intentionally walked Albert Pujols with two outs in the 10th -- not only putting the potential winning run on base, but also going away from a righty-on-righty matchup. After giving Pujols first base, Rangers righty Scott Feldman faced Cardinals switch-hitter Lance Berkman, and Berkman poked a two-strike, two-out single to tie the game at 9.
Let me tell you how crazy this game was. I'm just now getting to Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton -- the recovering crack addict who's playing with a sports hernia that will probably require offseason surgery -- crushed a two-run home run in the 10th that could have, and would have, gone down as one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history if it weren't for Berkman's tying single in the bottom of the inning.
And I'm just now getting to the crazy stuff done by Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, who burned through his bench in nine innings. He was forced to bat a pitcher in the 10th, with his team trailing 9-7, two runners on and no outs. And St. Louis needing a hit but St. Louis having no hitters. So La Russa sent a pitcher to the plate, Edwin Jackson, and removed him before he could bat and sent another pitcher to the plate, Kyle Lohse, and had him bunt.
And Lohse screwed up so bad that it worked.
Trying to get the ball onto the ground to move the runners to second and third, Lohse instead hit a blooper right where third baseman Adrian Beltre would have been, had he not been charging into Lohse's personal space. The bunt impossibly floated over Beltre's head, landing short of the shortstop, Andrus, and the deed was done. The runners had been moved to second and third, where they eventually scored.
Here we are, 800 words into the story, and I'm just now getting to Kyle Lohse's bunt.
What else have I missed? Oh, well, there's the Mike Napoli stuff. This is the 2011 World Series, so there's always Mike Napoli stuff. He got on base five times -- three walks, two hits -- and tied a World Series record for catchers with his 10th RBI of the series. Oh, and he played the final seven innings on an ankle I fear will be grotesquely swollen and possibly even unplayable for Game 7. He rolled his ankle at second base in the fourth inning, stayed in the game, then proceeded to squat, up and down, for the next three hours while also managing two more walks and a single in the 11th. Win or lose, if Mike Napoli isn't the MVP of this World Series, I'm going to ask that we administer a drug test to whoever votes on the thing.
Oh, right, and more Lance Berkman. You know about his season-saving single in the 10th. He's also the guy who scored the season-saving run in the ninth. And I'll be damned, but I'd forgotten until just now that it was Berkman who hit a home run in the first -- a two-run shot that went about 430 feet -- that had the crowd going early. All told, Berkman was 3 for 5 with four runs and three RBI. That's six runs (you subtract the one home run, which counts in both categories) that he either scored or drove in. That's one of the greatest individual offensive games in World Series history.
And yet, he's a footnote. Josh Hamilton is a footnote. The 15 pitchers used? Footnote. The 25 position players? Ibid. The five errors, the six home runs -- I almost left out Allen Craig's off-the-bench blast in the eighth, after Holliday left with a bruised finger -- and the seven runs scored after the eighth? Footnotes, all of it. Even David Freese, the guy with the two-out triple in the ninth and the walk-off home run in the 11th. He's a footnote in the greatest game, the most perfect game, I've ever seen.
Well, perfect for everyone but Rangers fans -- but the season didn't end for Texas on Thursday night. This was heartbreaking for the Rangers, had to be, but it wasn't a fatal blow to their 2011 campaign. They get one more chance. So does St. Louis. So do the rest of us, one more game to watch, though I can promise you this:
We just watched the best game of the 2011 World Series. History might smack down some of my earlier proclamations -- but it's not touching that one.
CBSSports.com wire reports
ST. LOUIS -- Twice down to their last strike, the St. Louis Cardinals kept rallying to win one of baseball's greatest thrillers.
David Freese completed a startling night of comebacks with a home run leading off the bottom of the 11th inning to beat Texas 10-9 on Thursday, and suddenly fans all over got something they have waited a long time to see: Game 7 in the World Series.
"You had to be here to believe it," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said.
It was as great a game as baseball has ever witnessed, rivaling the Carlton Fisk homer in Game 6 of the 1975 Series and Bill Buckner's error in Game 6 of the 1986 Series.
Great, that is, except for Texas. The Rangers were that close to their first championship.
"I understand it's not over till you get that last out," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "I was just sitting there praying we got that last out. We didn't get it."
Next up on Friday night, the first Game 7 in the World Series since the Angels beat San Francisco in 2002.
Freese, the hometown boy who made good, had already written himself into St. Louis lore in Game 6 with a two-strike, two-out, two-run triple in the ninth off Rangers closer Neftali Feliz that made it 7-7.
"Initially I was like 'Are you kidding me? My first AB off Feliz in this situation ever,' " Freese said. "I just beared down, got a pitch to hit. Initially I thought I hit it pretty good, I thought [right fielder Nelson Cruz] was going to grab it, so just a lot of emotions on that one."
After banged-up Josh Hamilton hit a two-run homer in the Texas 10th, St. Louis again tied it when Lance Berkman hit a two-out single on a 2-2 pitch from Scott Feldman.
Busch Stadium was still in frenzy when Freese opened the 11th with a leadoff shot over the center field wall off Mark Lowe. Freese thrust his arm in the air as he rounded first base, and the crowd was delirious.
"Just an incredible feeling, seeing all my teammates at the dish waiting for me," said Freese, whose shirt was torn off during the celebration.
A night that started off terribly for both teams turned terrific for everyone watching.
After it was over, La Russa wasn't willing to announce his starter for Game 7 -- many believe it will be ace Chris Carpenter on three days' rest. Matt Harrison is set to start for Texas.
Home teams have won the last eight Game 7s in the World Series, a streak that started with the Cardinals beating Milwaukee in 1982.
Texas trudged off the field as Freese circled the bases after connecting off Lowe, having been so close to that elusive title. Much earlier, team president Nolan Ryan was high-fiving friends in the stands as Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz opened the seventh with home runs that helped Texas take a 7-4 lead.
Allen Craig's solo home run in the eighth began the Cardinals' comeback. Jake Westbrook wound up with the win.
Hardly the ending anyone imagined in a game that started out with a bevy of errors and bobbles -- none more surprising than the routine popup that Freese simply dropped at third base.
"I'm just glad I had a chance after I looked like an idiot on that popup," Freese said.
The Cardinals made it 4-4 in the sixth when Alexi Ogando relieved starter Colby Lewis and walked Yadier Molina with the bases loaded.
Then came a key play -- Napoli and Beltre teamed up to pick off Matt Holliday at third with the bases loaded.
With one out, Napoli zipped a throw to Beltre, who neatly used his cleat to block the diving Holliday from reaching the base. That also ended Holliday's night with a severely bruised right pinkie.
Texas wasn't quite out of trouble as Nick Punto walked to reload the bases. But Derek Holland, the star of Game 4 with shutout ball into the ninth inning, trotted in from the bullpen and retired Jon Jay on a comebacker.
The Rangers looked loose as they took the field for pregame warmups. Cruz playfully kicked a couple of Cardinals gloves strewn on the grass, and smiled at his St. Louis pals.
Once they started, however, both Texas and St. Louis seemed tense, as if they were trying too hard with so much at stake. Either that, or they looked like they were playing in the sloppy weather that forced Wednesday night's postponement.
Exacerbated by the errors, the teams seesawed through the early innings.
Texas did more damage in three batters against Jaime Garcia than it did in seven scoreless innings against him in Game 2, with Hamilton hitting an RBI single in the first.
St. Louis came out swinging at first pitches, and Berkman's two-run homer into the center field bleachers made it 2-1 in the bottom half. Ian Kinsler tied it in the Texas second with an RBI double. Garcia was pulled after the third in his shortest outing since June 2010.
Shaky in the field all year, St. Louis made two errors in a span of four batters in the fourth behind reliever Fernando Salas, equaling its mistake total for the Series.
Holliday failed to take charge on an easy fly ball by Cruz and dropped it for a two-base error. Napoli followed with an opposite-field single to right that hit the chalk line for his 10th RBI of the Series. Salas then sailed Lewis' bunt into center and Napoli turned his left ankle as he went leg into the bag on the play. Napoli was checked, and was OK.
The misplays continued in the Cards fourth when first baseman Michael Young made an errant throw to Lewis covering the base, letting Berkman reach. Molina's RBI grounder made it 3-all.
The next botch belonged to St. Louis. Hamilton lifted a major league popup in the fifth that started foul, drifted fair and was dropped by Freese. Young took advantage with an RBI double for a 4-3 lead.
Notes
Texas was 0 for 11 with two outs and runners in scoring position in the Series until Kinsler's double. ... Berkman hit his first Series home run. He was moved up a spot to cleanup for this game. ... David Eckstein, MVP of the 2006 Series for St. Louis, threw out the first ball. ... Ninety-year-old Hall of Famer Stan Musial rode in on a golf cart during pregame festivities. ... The crowd of 47,325 was a record for 6-year-old Busch Stadium.
----------------------------------------------------------------
We just watched the ugliest, greatest game of the World Series
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist
ST. LOUIS -- History will say this is wrong. History always does. Tell yourself you've watched the greatest game in your life, maybe the greatest game in anyone's life, and history will smack you down. A better game will come along, or worse -- the thrill will fade. So consider yourself warned: The St. Louis Cardinals' 10-9 victory in Game 6 of the World Series wasn't the greatest game in baseball history, or in your own personal history.
Unless it was.
You think I'm going to tell you it wasn't? Hell no. I'm not saying a thing in the negative about this game, which was the most perfect World Series game since Don Larsen set down 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. That was a perfect game, true. But this was the perfect game.
It had everything -- good and bad and ugly -- and that was just in the first handful of innings. And then something happened, and this game became beautiful -- probably in the seventh when the teams stopped making errors and started hitting home runs. But then it became incredible, probably in the ninth when the Rangers moved within one strike of their first World Series title in franchise history, and the Cardinals rallied to force the 10th inning. And then the 11th.
And then when it ended in the 11th with a bolt of David Freese bat speed, with Freese homering to center and Busch Stadium exploding for the third time in three innings -- so loud that I couldn't hear the sound of my own screaming voice -- this game became perfect.
Just about everyone who played was a goat. And just about everyone who played was a hero. David Freese, to name one. He's the guy who dropped a routine pop-up in the fifth, allowing Josh Hamilton to get on base. Hamilton would score, so that run was on Freese. But then Freese saved the Cardinals' season in the ninth with a two-out, two-run triple that forced extra innings. And he won it in the 11th with the home run.
Matt Holliday, to name another. He screwed up Nelson Cruz's easy fly ball to left in the fourth, letting it fall for an error. Cruz would score, so that run was on Holliday -- who also was picked off third in the sixth, gutting a bases-loaded rally. But that was after he generated a run by barreling into Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus at second, breaking up a double play in the fourth and saving an out the Cardinals needed to score that inning.
Texas had its heroes and goats, too. Adrian Beltre was useless for three at-bats, then hit a home run in the seventh. Nelson Cruz followed with a home run and it was 6-4 Rangers, soon to be 7-4, and this game seemed over -- and it would have been, had Cruz tracked down Freese's triple in the ninth. Hero. Goat. All of it. All over the place.
The managers were doing crazy, crazy stuff. Ron Washington broke about 14 rules of baseball when he intentionally walked Albert Pujols with two outs in the 10th -- not only putting the potential winning run on base, but also going away from a righty-on-righty matchup. After giving Pujols first base, Rangers righty Scott Feldman faced Cardinals switch-hitter Lance Berkman, and Berkman poked a two-strike, two-out single to tie the game at 9.
Let me tell you how crazy this game was. I'm just now getting to Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton -- the recovering crack addict who's playing with a sports hernia that will probably require offseason surgery -- crushed a two-run home run in the 10th that could have, and would have, gone down as one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history if it weren't for Berkman's tying single in the bottom of the inning.
And I'm just now getting to the crazy stuff done by Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, who burned through his bench in nine innings. He was forced to bat a pitcher in the 10th, with his team trailing 9-7, two runners on and no outs. And St. Louis needing a hit but St. Louis having no hitters. So La Russa sent a pitcher to the plate, Edwin Jackson, and removed him before he could bat and sent another pitcher to the plate, Kyle Lohse, and had him bunt.
And Lohse screwed up so bad that it worked.
Trying to get the ball onto the ground to move the runners to second and third, Lohse instead hit a blooper right where third baseman Adrian Beltre would have been, had he not been charging into Lohse's personal space. The bunt impossibly floated over Beltre's head, landing short of the shortstop, Andrus, and the deed was done. The runners had been moved to second and third, where they eventually scored.
Here we are, 800 words into the story, and I'm just now getting to Kyle Lohse's bunt.
What else have I missed? Oh, well, there's the Mike Napoli stuff. This is the 2011 World Series, so there's always Mike Napoli stuff. He got on base five times -- three walks, two hits -- and tied a World Series record for catchers with his 10th RBI of the series. Oh, and he played the final seven innings on an ankle I fear will be grotesquely swollen and possibly even unplayable for Game 7. He rolled his ankle at second base in the fourth inning, stayed in the game, then proceeded to squat, up and down, for the next three hours while also managing two more walks and a single in the 11th. Win or lose, if Mike Napoli isn't the MVP of this World Series, I'm going to ask that we administer a drug test to whoever votes on the thing.
Oh, right, and more Lance Berkman. You know about his season-saving single in the 10th. He's also the guy who scored the season-saving run in the ninth. And I'll be damned, but I'd forgotten until just now that it was Berkman who hit a home run in the first -- a two-run shot that went about 430 feet -- that had the crowd going early. All told, Berkman was 3 for 5 with four runs and three RBI. That's six runs (you subtract the one home run, which counts in both categories) that he either scored or drove in. That's one of the greatest individual offensive games in World Series history.
And yet, he's a footnote. Josh Hamilton is a footnote. The 15 pitchers used? Footnote. The 25 position players? Ibid. The five errors, the six home runs -- I almost left out Allen Craig's off-the-bench blast in the eighth, after Holliday left with a bruised finger -- and the seven runs scored after the eighth? Footnotes, all of it. Even David Freese, the guy with the two-out triple in the ninth and the walk-off home run in the 11th. He's a footnote in the greatest game, the most perfect game, I've ever seen.
Well, perfect for everyone but Rangers fans -- but the season didn't end for Texas on Thursday night. This was heartbreaking for the Rangers, had to be, but it wasn't a fatal blow to their 2011 campaign. They get one more chance. So does St. Louis. So do the rest of us, one more game to watch, though I can promise you this:
We just watched the best game of the 2011 World Series. History might smack down some of my earlier proclamations -- but it's not touching that one.