A Final Look Back...At Least For Now

Tomorrow, a new baseball season begins for the Cardinals, meaning it's time to start looking forward, not backward. So, some final remembrances of 2011.

The last 5 months I've explored the far reaches of the internet, looking for videos to capture the magic of the 2011 World Series for the historical record.

There's lots of them. The next couple of days I'll post some of my favorites.

We'll start with these three. None are very long.

I find these 3 videos significant, not so much for the bedlam of the miraculous Game 6, but for the perspective of the dumb-founded Ranger fans lost in a nightmare from which they will never totally escape. Time may pass, years fly by, but what might have been will always haunt them.

Whoever they are. (And thanks to the documenter of such, whoever they may be, for their videos).

So close, but never to be. It's the flip side, the yang to the yin, so to speak. Whenever something great happens in team sports, something bad is happening to someone else.

Let's start with the bottom of the 9th, already mid-flight of Freese's heroic triple. I especially feel bad for the the two women sitting behind the documenter of the moment, wiping away a tear, or more, after Freese's 9th inning triple, around the 37 second mark.



I kind of wonder what their story is, why they are at the game, and why it obviously means so much to them. Those two, at this moment, are the embodiment of what sadness is.

The contrast of unbridled joy and heart-break makes these videos remarkable. Here's Berkman's 10th inning heroics.



Again, notice all the blue-hatted Ranger fans, waiting for that 3rd strike, that 3rd out, that never came. Who I think after this moment, had to realize the futility of their cause, and, their certain defeat. The 2 women do not appear, but the Rangers fan at around the 39 second mark, standing in stunned disbelief, sums it all up. A picture is worth a thousand words.

The last video starts with Freese's homer mid-flight. The women in the first video make a brief appearance around 1:05, but are gone forever soon after.



The Rangers fans appeared to be pretty good sports about the whole thing, although what else could they do? They were part of something they would never forget, but for all the wrong reasons.

As a Cardinals fan, I have felt the unsurpassed joy of winning, but also can understand, a little, what these Rangers fans went through. Having lived through a Game 6 of my own, in 1985, I kind of can sympathize with them.

Which is why, if the Cardinals don't make it this year, I'll be pulling for them this year. Especially since I really can't stand the Angels. But no need to go into that right now.