Baseball:The St Louis Cardinals completed their magical comeback season by beating the Texas Rangers 6-2 in a deciding game seven to clinch the World Series on home soil last night.
After left-fielder Allen Craig caught David Murphy’s fly for the final out, the Cards rushed into the infield to celebrate a season in which they overcame a 10-1/2 game deficit in the last month to reach the playoffs and battled back twice in the postseason for their 11th Major League Baseball crown.
Confetti filled the chilly night air as the raucous, white-towel waving crowd at Busch Stadium roared in delight and fireworks lit the sky.
“There's just one way to describe it – it’s unbelievable, amazing, incredible,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said in a ceremony in the middle of the diamond. “It’s hard to imagine it actually happened.”
The World Series most valuable player award went to hometown hero David Freese, whose two-run triple in the bottom of the ninth sent game six into extra innings before his 11th-inning home run won that game for the Cardinals to force the decider.
Freese, who also won MVP honours in the National League Championship Series against Milwaukee, drove in two runs on Friday and finished with seven runs batted in.
“This is definitely a dream come true,” the 28-year-old third baseman said after being awarded the trophy and a new sports car. “This is incredible.”
It was a wrenching defeat for the Rangers, who had twice been one strike away during game six of clinching their first title in 51 years of existence, and who had fallen last year to the San Francisco Giants in the decider.
“I just told my team they are champions,” said Texas manager Ron Washington. “Someone had to win and someone had to lose and it was the Cardinals who won.
“It was in our grasp and we didn't get it done. We fought hard but the Cardinals were too good. My hat’s off to the Cardinals, they cleanly beat us.”