• Go Crazy, Folks. Unbelievable. When Yadier hit his blast, I jumped off my couch, fell down on the carpet and was doing snow angels. When Wainwright (who apparently has learned a lot from Izzy) struck Beltran out to end it, let's just say I just hope my neighbors weren't trying to sleep. How wrong the entire world, myself included, were. And right now, Jeff Suppan is my favorite Cardinal.

• The 26th Man. Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket. If I didn't see it, I wouldn't have believed it. The worst hitter on the team supplies the biggest hit of the season. All during the NLCS, the Cardinals have been rolling the dice with house money. And we hit on a hard 9. Unbelievable. I'm going to pour a beer on myself.

• Faith And Fear In Flushing. Well, damn. Congratulations to the Cardinals and their fans. If you'd been told we'd get that pitching performance from Oliver Perez, you'd have taken it. That we'd give up three runs? You'd have taken it. That we'd hold Pujols at bay all night? Ditto. And if we'd been told it would come down to bases loaded, a dunker away from tying it and a gapper away from the World Series and Carlos Beltran at the plate, you'd have taken that too. (And if I ever meet Endy Chavez, I'm buying him a beer for a catch that will always have me leaning closer to the TV in disbelief.)

• Get Up, Baby. YES. Yadier! Supp! Everybody else! Your 2006 National League Champions, the Last Gasp of MV3, the Best of the Worst, the Masters of the Mediocre, Pasters of the Padres, Maddeners of the Mets, Terrifiers of the Tigers! Long may they reign! I'm not going to pretend to analyze anything here. Yadier Molina just pulled a pitch into the seats. He grinned like Charlie Brown after sex. He rounded the bases, and then Adam Wainwright showed everything he learned from Izzy, from the maddening walks to buckling down and showing a cartoon curveball when it matters most. What should've happened didn't. The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals are going to the World Series. I've never been happier to be so wrong.

• Shea Nation. My blame rests completely on the Mets offense. They had plenty of opportunities to break the game open with two innings each in which the bases were loaded. The ninth inning strike out of Cliff Floyd was just good pitching on the part of their rookie closer. But the two strikeouts of David Wright and Carlos Beltran rests on them because I personally feel that they could have made something out of it. There is no crying in baseball, so the whole Mets fan base, Mets Trades and Shea Nation will just have to suck it up and begin to cover the off season a little earlier than expected.

• Viva El Birdos. a few people in the game thread somehow got the idea that the pitchout called in the 7th inning cost the cardinals the game; interesting theory. when a manager calls a pitchout, and the runner is going, and he's out by 5 steps, that's generally a good call by the manager. and it's what should have happened —- except molina threw the ball into centerfield. nothing at all wrong with the call —- perfect anticipation by la russa. the fault lay with the execution . . . . But hey, if it makes you feel better to believe that the pitchout caused reyes' infield hit and the subsequent two-run single by lo duca, by all means be my guest . . . . all in all, a discouraging game.

• Get Up, Baby. Well, I guess it was too much to ask that they spare a game seven so I can watch the Office without interruption. Games like these are why I don't post as often in the playoffs as I do during the regular season. If ever there was a time when I wanted Jeff "The Most Boring Pitcher Ever" Suppan on the hill, leaving a path of death, destruction and tidy consistency in his slow, even wake, it's now.

• Amazin' Avenue. The only blemish on the pitching record was another disconcerting effort by Billy Wagner, who allowed two runs on three hits while pitching on five days rest. Wagner was beat again by So Taguchi, who (again) survived an egregious non-third-strike call by the home plate umpire to dump a two-run double down the left field line. Wagner's slider was pretty sloppy, which isn't particularly uncommon for a pitcher who hasn't thrown in a number of days. Still, Wagner hasn't been able to put away these Cardinal hitters, and he hasn't struck out a single batter in 2.2 innings this series.

• CardNilly. This post was originally going to be all vitriol and vituperation. Seething anger at men left on base and defensive miscues and balls thrown into center field. Oh, and I was in a fine spirit for it, too, having already hurled some papers I was editing across the girlfriend's living room in disgust at one of the above transgressions. But after a little alone time, I found myself in a different state of mind. At the end of this year, at the end of this season, I just want one thing. If we go down, I want to go down swinging.

• Faith And Fear In Flushing. Fear Strikes Out. Great news! We've already done what we need to do tonight and tomorrow night 61 times in 2006. We've won two games in a row 61 times. It's about to be 62. October 18 and 19.

• Viva El Birdos. They're a win away . . . la russa continues to amaze me. bottom 8th, jose valentin at the plate with the tying runs on base. flores was already in the game, and seemingly the right guy to pitch to valentin, who has always been helpless vs left-handed pitchers. this season he's got a .644 OPS vs lhp, but an .879 OPS vs rhp; over the last 3 years combined he's got a .676 OPS vs lefties, but an .817 OPS vs righties. and with the left-handed chavez on deck and another lefty, cliff floyd, waiting to pinch-hit for the pitcher, you'd seemingly want a left-hander all the way down the line. so what does la russa do? he removes the left-handed flores and brings in a right-hander, wainwright —- seemingly playing into valentin's hands. why in god's name? . . . . the curveball, apparently. the scouting reports must have said that valentin can't handle a hook, because that's what wainwright fed him — a 1st-pitch fastball for strike 1, then 4 curves in 5 pitches. valentin swung through one, took another for strike 3.

• Mike's Mets. Home plate umpire Jeff Kellogg had a terribly inconsistent strike zone all night, but he had a better game than most of the Mets hitters, so resist the urge to blame him, please. In a very important game, the Mets reverted to their September offensive approach, with predictable results.

• The Gas House Gang. Alright, Jeff Weaver came through for us big time last night. There's no travel day because of the rain out. Tonight will be our best chance to win this thing because we'll have Chris Carpenter going up against John Maine. Our ace is on the mound so it's imperative we get this done.

• The 26th Man. Aloha, Mr. Hand ... Wow. We really are just one win away from the World Series, thanks to yet another stellar outing from Jeff Weaver. He didn't dominate, but he got the outs when he needed them. I can't seem to stop gushing about that guy. This whole up-3-games-to-2-in-the-NLCS thing is weird and scary to me. I still can't believe So Taguchi hit a home run the other day. I'm at a loss for words. Interesting ones, anyway.

• Amazin' Avenue. I feared mentioning this before last night's game because it didn't work out so well in Game 2, but I brought Endy shirt out of retirement for Game 4 and, after a day off, he really seemed to pull it together. He had been a thoroughbred for six straight games, winning the last two games of the regular season against the Nationals and sweeping the Dodgers out of the LDS altogether. His youthful exuberance carried into the LCS as the Mets took Game 1 behind the arm of Tom Glavine. Midway through Game 2 it felt like Endy shirt could Do no wrong, but then it all came crashing down. On Endy shirt.

• The 26th Man. The bullpen's supply of Magic Pixie Dust finally ran out. Brad Thompson and Josh Hancock bore the brunt of Sunday's debacle. If you thought Thompson's ERA after Game 4 was unsightly at 27.00, consider Hancock's. After allowing all five batters he faced to reach base and score, his ERA for the NLCS stands at 162.00. That kind of sucks. Tyler Johnson also came back to Earth, although in not the explode-and-leave-a-fiery-crater fashion of Hancock. Braden Looper, of all people, gives the yeoman's effort to get through the final three frames, yielding only one run.

• Take The 7 Train . This game simply came down to the fact the Cardinals ran out watered down pitching and this Met offense can do alot of damage against run of the mill pitching. Lucky for them that Oliver Perez was Ok tonight and that their middle relief is unusually good. I have to say that Delgado and Beltran are proving their worth in this post season. Now the series is even and tomorrow night we see a rematch of game on-Tom Glavine vs. Jeff Weaver.

• Viva El Birdos. Mets even the series, 2 up. Both teams have won a game via shutout and one vs the opposing team's bullpen . . . . pretty even series. Cards are not badly positioned despite the loss; only two wins away from the world series, with carp and suppan still to pitch. I'll take my chances with that. . . .

• Mets Geek. I just want to talk a bit about the fans in St. Louis. Time after time we have heard the Cardinals' fans effusively praised as the best in baseball, and after watching the first two games at Busch III I have to admit that I simply don't understand the hoopla. Sure, they get up and cheer when something good happens, but who doesn't? Tampa Bay fans cheer when Ty Wigginton hits a homerun but you don't see anyone showering them with "best in fandom" accolades. When the Cardinals aren't scoring runs the crowd is just a sea of vapid, emotionless faces. Fans around the league cheer their team when they perform, but unless taping red construction paper to your chin is emblematic of some midwestern ebullience that I've just missed the boat on, the professed superiority of the St. Louis fans has been greatly exaggerated.

NOTE: The blog Mets Forever has had no new posts since May 2004. We just find that kind of funny.

• Athletics Nation. Tonight was essentially George Costanza's opposite day. At least on the defensive front. And it wasn't just the Jimenez error, although that was huge. Swisher not getting an out on the Granderson play. Chavez missing a ball that he vaccuumed up during the regular season. It just wasn't the A's on the defensive side. If that's the right way, I don't wanna be right.

• Detroit Tiger Weblog. So far the extent of Sean Casey's injury still isn't known and won't be until (1.) he wakes up, and (2.) he gets some diagnostics (i.e. MRI). What we do know is that my fears have come to fruition and Neifi Perez will be getting the nod at shortstop with Carlos Guillen going to first. This is my problem with Perez. It isn't that he's bad to have as a 25th guy, it's that Jim Leyland uses him as a 10th guy. I know that we're not supposed to criticize Leyland, but the decision to carry Infante/Perez/Santiago was a poor one.

• Mack Avenue Tigers. Seriously, don't write Oakland off after one game. I've read some opinions, writers and normal folk alike, and it would be a mistake to see this as an easy series. Oakland is a team that can get very good, very quick.

• The Pastime. Well, that was a weak attempt. The Tigers took advantage of too many Oakland mistakes tonight to take Game One. Macha needs to use his deep pen. Zito was done an inning before he was pulled, and the Oakland pen shut out the Tigers for the rest of the game. Hope Jerry Crawford doesn't get back behind the plate. His strike zone was awful tonight. There's a reason his 2006 stats were so out of line. His strike zone is terrible. I'm still confident that the A's can pull it out.

• Condition Oakland. I'm never happy when the A's lose, but to lose like this is just unacceptable. They rocked Nate Robertson for 6 hits and worked 3 walks with runners on base every inning - and got none of them home. They hit into 2 inning ending double plays and then with runners on second and third with NOBODY OUT Robertson strikes out three in a row. The A's beat themselves, Detroit had nothing to do with it.

• Nate Robertson's Gum Time. The funny thing is, I didn't change a whole lot from my New York start. People are like, "Oh, gosh, what's going on? Robertson's starting. Look what happened in New York." It wasn't about that. I went at them just like I went at New York. A few things could've gone differently — the ground ball that I should've fielded, maybe a pitch called my way, just a few things. And that's baseball. You've got to accept it. I can't sit there and pity-party about that. That's just the way it went. But I still felt good about how I went at them. I didn't shy away from them, and I didn't shy away tonight. I went right at them.