For baseball and Cards, a striking run

ST. LOUIS - A Game 6 that ranked among baseball's greatest thrillers. A three-homer performance by Albert Pujols that was one of the best hitting shows in postseason history. Ron Washington running in place, Tony La Russa reacting in dismay at a ball that got away. Everyone learning how to chant "Nap-Oh-Lee!"

Oh, and a Rally Squirrel on the scoreboard and a telephone mix-up in the bullpen.

"I told you it was going to be a great Series - and it was," Texas slugger Josh Hamilton said.

St. Louis came back to win the championship with a 6-2 victory Friday night.

"Now that we've won it, it makes yesterday greater," Cards manager La Russa said.

Said Hamilton: "It was actually fun to watch and fun to see. You hate it, but it happened."

An October for fans to cherish, for sure. A lot of them tuned in: The clincher drew the most viewers for a baseball game since Boston won in 2004, and boosted overall television ratings 19 percent higher than last year's World Series between Texas and San Francisco.

Even before the opener, there were predictions the Series would be a dud. It lacked big-market teams. Minus the likes of the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies, some said, it would attract little attention.

Inning by inning, it got more intriguing.

"I know there's been a lot of conversation about ratings," commissioner Bud Selig said before Game 7. "Some of it, in my opinion . . . was misinformed."

No mistaking that it was quite a run for baseball.

Exactly a month before the Cardinals won their 11th championship, they captured a playoff spot on the final day of the regular season. The night of Sept. 28 was riveting - St. Louis capped a comeback from 101/2 games down to overtake Atlanta for the NL wild card, and Tampa Bay completed its late surge to beat out Boston for the AL wild card.

The playoffs produced their moments, too. The one that brought winning and losing into a tight focus: Chris Carpenter and the Cardinals celebrating their 1-0 win over Roy Halladay at Citizen's Bank Park while star slugger Ryan Howard writhed on the ground, having torn his Achilles tendon during a game-ending groundout.

In a year punctuated by historic comebacks and epic collapses, it'd be easy to say the biggest rally of all belonged to baseball. That's what many like to say whenever the game shows up well.

Certainly a back-and-forth World Series boosted interest, helped by the two most magical words in sports: Game 7.

"There isn't anybody on this team, the other team, too, that when you're a young kid you don't think about winning the World Series, and it's always in Game 7," La Russa said.

Series MVP David Freese said, "I'm trying to soak this all in. I've tried to soak in this whole postseason as much as I can because you never know if it's your last."