If You Hate Baseball, Don't Read This One

I am going to say it right now:  The Cardinals are going to win the World Series this year.

Let me explain my prediction:

The Cardinals were in town this weekend.

That's right, the I-70 Series was this weekend and that means that I got to see my Cardinals live.

Not only did I get to see them play, but I got to see them win... Big.  The game I saw on Friday was commandingly won by the Cards 10-5.  I then got to watch them on TV Saturday (7-1) and Sunday (12-5).  

To top it off, Cards vs. Mets is the Monday Night Game on ESPN tonight.

That's a whole lot of Cardinals, people.  And that means that I am very happy.

(Just to put some icing on the baseball cake, we also went to Royals-Dbacks on Thursday and got to sit in the Diamond Club- the awesome club seats right behind home plate.  Danny Haren was pitching and I irrationally love him (mainly because he came up with the Cards), so it was also awesome.)

I walked away from the weekend with the certainty that this is the year the Cardinals are going to win their 11th World Championship.

Now, I know that beating the slumping Royals isn't exactly the most impressive feat out there.  (Sorry, Royals fans.)  But it was the way they beat them that has me so convinced.

We had crazy offense.  On Friday, I saw Ludwick hit a grand slam after Pujols was intentionally walked.  On Sunday, el Hombre hit 2 home runs, one being another grand slam.  We were manufacturing runs left and right.  

We've had the pitching all year.  At one point, our starting rotation went something like 43 innings with 4 earned runs.  It was crazy.  We were 16-7 at the end of April.

But still I wasn't sold.  We have a lot of young players and our offense was questionable.  We were committing a lot of errors and I wasn't sure how long it could last.

We slumped a little in May, but then our offense caught fire.

Now I love where we're at.  We're commanding, but still a little under the radar.  That's right where we need to be.  As long as everyone stays healthy (knock on wood), there's not a team in baseball who can stop us.  

If you disagree with me, we'll talk in October.  (And I will say I told you so, loudly and often.)

Go Cards!