Image Credit: Eric Gay/AP
Though Game 7s should be, by definition, the most dramatic games in sports, Game 6s have a better reputation for classic World Series games. The ball dribbled through Bill Buckner’s legs in a Game 6. Carlton Fisk waved his home run fair in a Game 6. Kirby Puckett hit his walk-off home run in a Game 6. Last night, St. Louis Cardinal David Freese, who hit only 10 home runs during the season, saved his team’s season with a two-strike, two-out triple in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the score and then hit a solo home run in the 11th to win the game and force a deciding Game 7. It was the kind of game that every little kid dreams of having, especially since the 28-year-old third baseman grew up in Missouri.
Game 6 was a thrilling heart-stopper, with the home team rallying from three runs down to force extra innings. But even then, fate seemed to turn against them, as Texas’ injured star Josh Hamilton conjured up visions of Kirk Gibson with a two-run home run in the 10th that seemed destined to be the series-clincher. Somehow, the Cardinals rallied again in the bottom of the inning: with two outs and two strikes, Lance Berkman tied the game again with a run-scoring single, settling the table for Freese’s 11th-inning heroics. Four hours and 33 minutes after the game’s first pitch, all of St. Louis was bedlam. The Cards literally ripped Freese’s jersey off his back! “Not much to say but thanks everybody,” Freese tweeted after the victory. “Like I said though… unfinished business. One more.”
So just like that, we’re looking at a winner-take-all Game 7 of the World Series! READ FULL STORY »
