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Friday, October 27, 2006

One more left to go

The St. Louis Cardinals' incredible postseason run continued Thursday with an amazing 5-4 comeback win over the Detroit Tigers.

That, of course, means the Cardinals need to win just one more game to win the World Series. With a 3-1 lead in the Series, the odds look good that the Cardinals will win their 10th World Series title.

But as we Cardinals fans know, winning that fourth game can be a difficult task. All we have to do is take a look back at 1985 and 1987.

In 1985, the Cardinals were a half-inning away from winning the Series in Game 6 against the Kansas City Royals. With a 1-0 lead, the Royals' Jorge Orta hit a slow roller to Cardinals first baseman Jack Clark, who tossed the ball to reliever Todd Worrell, who was covering first base. The umpire, Don Denkinger, called Orta safe even though replays clearly showed Orta was out.

While many Cardinals fans blame the Denkinger call for the Game 6 loss, the Cardinals didn't help themselves when Clark later misplayed a foul pop-up and catch Darrell Porter allowed a passed ball. The Cardinals lost that game 2-1, forcing Game 7. The Cardinals suffered a complete meltdown in Game 7, losing that game 11-0 and the Series 4-3.

In 1987, the Minnesota Twins were the Cardinals' World Series foes. The Twins won the first two games in Minnesota, then the Cardinals won the next three in St. Louis. The Twins proceeded to win the next two games at the Metrodome and won the series, marking the first time in Series history that all the games were won by the home team.

It would be sweet if the Cardinals could close things out tonight in St. Louis -- provided they're able to play because of the weather. Unfortunately, we're still in the midst of November-style weather -- cool, damp and gloomy, so we shall see whether they'll play tonight. If the game is called off, the forecast is much more promising for Saturday evening: mostly clear skies and temperatures in the 50s.

Because I was working, designing the front page pictured above, I only got to see bits and pieces of Game 4, but it was still sweet watching newsroom Cardinals fans gather around the television and cheering the Cards to victory.

There is a small pocket of non-Cardinals fans who work at the News-Democrat. They watched the game last night on a TV in the room that houses our Sports and Lifestyle departments, segregated from the Cardinals fans watching in the main newsroom.

After the game, one of them told me "the Cardinals suck." All I can say to that is that the teams she roots for, the New York Mets and the Oakland A's, must really suck because they both lost to teams playing in this World Series. Sure, the Tigers aren't exactly playing stellar defense, but teams like the Cardinals still have to take advantage of those breaks and so far they have.

Speaking of the News-Democrat, kudos go to members of our Sports department -- Sports Editor Joe Ostermeier and sports writers David Wilhelm, Rod Kloeckner and Norm Sanders -- for their coverage. We don't have the resources that the much-larger St. Louis Post-Dispatch has to cover the Series, but our guys are doing a good job of covering the bases.

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