Comeback Kids

One of the most improbable comebacks in MLB history took place Wednesday night in our favor after all. The Cardinals trailed 8.5 games to the Braves back on September 5th and ended up taking the Wild Card by one game.

The “Eastern” Sports Programming Network (ESPN) wanted to of course over glorify anything Boston-Yanks related though, so you may not have been incredibly familiar with the situation unless you were a true fan. Evan Longoria and the Rays wedging out the Red Sox was a phenomenal story, but they were in an eerily similar situation being down to the Red Sox by 9 games on September 2.

Being in the heart of Braves country, I have had to hear nothing but complaints for the last month and honestly, I couldn’t be happier with the results.

"Too many of our pitchers are hurt"

– We have been dealt the injury blow all season.

"It’s not fair, you end against Houston and we got Philadelphia"

– We swept you and took 3 of 4 from the Phillies just to be able to stay alive in the last three weeks, deal with it.

I am not trying to come off as this pompous, arrogant individual. When you live in the south and have the Saints and Braves shoved down your throat everyday as the greatest things to happen to professional sports, you tend to gather hostile feelings and this in my case is a much bigger rivalry than against any other team as a result.

Chris Carpenter finally came out tonight and proved his naysayers wrong (me included) to two hit the opponent when we needed him the most. Jaime, Westbrook, and McClellan were shaky the past two days before and had us scared. I know, it’s just Houston. The Astros are a Carlos Lee away from being a Double A club right now, but this caps off our seventh straight series victory for a team we thought was long since dead.

Next up, we travel to Philadelphia to play a weekend series against the Phillies. Sure they just finished a sweep of the struggling Braves, but you have to remember the Phillies only won 5 of their last 16 coming into this series, 3 of those losses coming from that Cardinals series. Health has been a bit of a concern for the Phillies, but they are now starting to rehab everyone back and were still able to push on to prepare for the playoffs.

What have we learned from that series and watching the ever so intense Phils-Braves series? The Phillies are VERY beatable. Matt Holliday and Rafael Furcal are now a major question mark for us. Eduardo Sanchez is back in a big way and pitched his heart out Tuesday to help the Cardinals tie the Wild Card up. Our bats are pretty hot and if the pitching stays together, who knows where we can go.

Game 1 Saturday night in Philadelphia. I have no qualms with any of the four NL teams, I like them all. My heart of course will always lean to the Cardinals, let’s hope this weekend we can prove it’s always sunny in Philadelphia after all.