The St. Louis Cardinals' David Freese celebrates with teammates after hitting a walk-off home run in Game 6 of the's World Series against the Texas Rangers, Oct. 27, 2011.
It’s been nine years since the World Series saw a Game 7, winner take all. Baseball fans have been starving for one. Well, we’ve got one this year. On Friday night, the St. Louis Cardinals will host the Texas Rangers in Game 7 of the 2011 World Series. But in a way, that’s too bad, because it’s bound to be anticlimactic. Game 7 will never beat Game 6. What could possibly beat Game 6?
The Cardinals’ 10-9 victory over the Rangers on Thursday night, which ended with an 11th inning walk-off home run by third baseman David Freese, started out as an ugly, error-prone joke of a baseball game. It ended as one of the most beautiful, tense, exhilarating, mind-bending things you’ll ever see. In back-to-back innings, the ninth and the tenth, St. Louis was down to its last strike, and the Texas Rangers on the verge of clinching their first championship since the franchise came into existence, as the old Washington Senators, in 1961. And in those back-to-back innings, the Cardinals tied it up at the final moment, extending Texas’ agony, before Freese crushed his winning home run. The fans that drove all the way from Texas, waving the state flag, to witness a coronation in St. Louis will have to wait another night for a championship. Then again, they may never get that close to tasting glory again.
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“I’ve never been close to being in a game like this, I promise,” says Texas Rangers pitcher Derek Holland, who gave up one run in two innings of relief. “It was nerve-racking. I thought I could have a heart attack. Both teams were fighting so hard to the end. I can’t think of anything better for baseball.”
The game had so many heroes and goats that will become footnotes, since something more surprising always seemed to happen in the next inning. Take Matt Holliday, for example. Nelson Cruz of Texas led off the top of the fourth with a shallow fly ball to left field: neither Holliday, the St. Louis left fielder, nor shortstop Rafael Furcal could sort out who would catch it. At the last second Holliday lunged for it and dropped it. Cruz reached second and scored on a Mike Napoli single to give Texas a 3-2 lead.
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The very next inning, with the score tied 3-3, Freese dropped a simple fly ball at third base. “I felt like I was part of a circus out there, bouncing balls off the top of my hat,” Freese says. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe that happened. A 4-year-old would have caught it with two hands.’” That error led to another go-ahead Texas run.
In the top of the seventh, and the score now tied 4-4, Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz slugged back-to-back solo home runs that put the Rangers just nine outs away from the title. These guys would be kings of Texas! The Rangers entered the bottom of the ninth with a 7-5 lead and ace closer Neftali Feliz on the mound. With runners on first and second and two outs, the St. Louis season came down to Freese, the man with the jittery hands. “I went up to the dish saying, ‘What a great way to have my first career at-bat off Feliz,’ ” says Freese, who grew up in a St. Louis suburb. “He started off with some off-speed, so I was like, Now what’s coming? I just said, ‘Heater.’ “
Freese hit the 1-2 fastball the opposite way, into deep right field. At first, it felt gone, but the deep dimensions at Busch wouldn’t permit a home run. Cruz looked like he had a read on it. At that moment, the World Series felt finished. “Rounding first base, I thought he was going to catch it,” Freese says. But Cruz mistimed his run back to the wall. When he reached out his glove, he couldn’t catch up to the ball. Both runs scored on the Freese triple. Busch Stadium went wild. The Cardinals, who were down 10.5 games in the playoff race in late August, a stretch-run afterthought, were saved once again.
But before the Cardinals crowd came down from its high, Josh Hamilton sent it reeling again. With a man on first in the top of the 10th, Hamilton, last year’s American League MVP who had not hit a home run all postseason, slugged the first pitch from reliever Jason Motte comfortably over the right-field wall. Now, it was 9-7 Rangers. They’d get their title. Hamilton, the man who has faced so many personal demons, would be the toast of Texas and all of baseball.
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St. Louis could not come back again, right? In the bottom of the 10th, the Cardinals cut the lead to 9-8. With two outs and John Jay, who came up with two key late-inning hits after going 0-16 in the series, at third, Lance Berkman now had two strikes on him. As the drama captivated the country, Berkman wasn’t living the dream. “Heck, when you’re down to you’re last strike, no one thinks, This is fun,” says Berkman. “Loose is not how I would describe myself.” Jitters or not, Berkman tied it up again, incredibly, with a single to right-center field. “It was certainly the greatest game I’ve ever been a part of,” Berkman says.
(See more about Josh Hamilton of the Rangers.)
After the Rangers failed to score in the top half of the 11th, Freese led off the bottom half for St. Louis. Texas reliever Mark Lowe threw him a full-count change-up. “I knew I got it good, but with this stadium, you never know,” Freese says. His shot landed in a patch of grass beyond the center-field fence. “Yeah, I saw the usher trying to keep everybody off the grass. But that obviously didn’t work.” Twenty years ago nearly to the day, legendary Cardinals announcer Jack Buck famously said, “See you tomorrow night!” after Kirby Puckett won Game 6 of the 1991 World Series with an 11th inning home run for the Minnesota Twins. (Buck was calling the game for CBS.) Freese forced another Game 7 and Jack’s son Joe into the same commentary line on Fox: See you tomorrow night.
Freese says he didn’t hear much as he jogged the bases, and he thought about the time that former Cardinal Jim Edmonds won a Game 6, of the 2004 National League Championship Series, with a last-inning home run. “As I was rounding second, I was looking for my team,” he says. They were crowded around home plate, preparing to mob him. Freese spiked his helmet before being enveloped. Nearly an hour after the game, some Busch Stadium fans still didn’t want to leave.
(See more on the 2004 World Series.)
In the World Series, there have many memorable Game 6s. Carlton Fisk of the Boston Red Sox famously waved his home run fair in Game 6. The ’86 New York Mets made their comeback in Game 6 against the Sox. Puckett’s shot was a classic. But this Game 6 set the new standard. No other had these twists. The sloppy start will be part of its charm. Down the road, when talking about this game, you won’t even have to refer to it by year. Just call it “Game 6,” like a Brazilian soccer star with one name.
Even if Texas somehow recovers to win Game 7, this one is still an all-time classic. Holland says the Texas locker room wasn’t a morgue afterward, as you might expect. “We’re not going to sit around and sulk about what happened,” Holland says. “We’ll go in, take a nice shower, and rub it off … You can tell everybody was frustrated, but it wasn’t a silence thing.” As Rangers manager Ron Washington walked past a Busch Stadium attendant on his way to his postgame interview, the red-clad man chirped, “You won’t be sipping champagne tonight.” (What happened to that Midwestern politeness?) Rangers president Nolan Ryan strolled slowly through the bowels of Busch Stadium, with his wife walking a step ahead of them, headed toward a night of irritation, not celebration.
The St. Louis clubhouse, for its part, was no party scene. The Cardinals know they still have work to do Friday night. Freese, his T-shirt shredded thanks to rabid teammates, signed a bat and gave it to the fan who caught and returned his home run ball. (The fan started getting greedy, though, asking Freese for group pictures of Cardinals players. Freese knew this would be impossible to pull off but had to be polite about it. Awkward.)
A few minutes later, Freese stood at his locker, finally ready to wind the night down. This was the first walk-off home run of his life. “I’ve never met my team at home plate,” Freese says. Not in Little League, not in high school. Never.
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You picked the perfect time to hit your first one, someone noted. “What if it had been tomorrow night?” Freese says. We could only imagine, but don’t count on it. Don’t get greedy. We’re lucky enough to have Game 6.
Gregory is a staff writer at TIME. Keeping Score, his sports column for TIME.com, appears on Fridays. Find him on Twitter at @seanmgregory. You can also continue the discussion on TIME‘sFacebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.