Red October

ST. LOUIS -- Impossible dreamers? That was the Red Sox team the St. Louis Cardinals beat in 1967, when the champions' roster boasted names such as Gibson and Brock, Flood and Cepeda.

But this ragtag bunch of Birds, winners of fewer regular-season games (83) than any team ever to be the last one standing at the end of October, earned a place among history's most unlikely champions with a 4-2 win over the Detroit Tigers, clinching the 102d World Series, four games to one.

One Cardinal s player stood above all others last night, completing the transformation from Junkyard Jeff to Dream Weaver in a single October.

Jeff Weaver, a pitcher who wasn't even considered the best in his family back in June, when the Angels let him go in order to keep little brother Jered, held the Tigers to four hits and two runs (one earned) over eight innings, striking out nine. Weaver's nine whiffs were the most in a World Series game since Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett, while still with Florida, struck out 10 Yankees in the clinching game in 2003.

"[Weaver] pitched the game of his life," said Chris Carpenter, the New Hampshire native son who was hurt and unable to perform in the 2004 World Series, which ended with the Sox celebrating across the street in a Busch Stadium that has since been torn down and replaced by this new model, which in its first year was christened in the sweetest way possible.

"He came out and pitched and pitched and pitched in the biggest game he'll ever pitch," said Carpenter, who in Game 3 went eight shutout innings for the win, allowing three hits to the Tigers (.199 for the series). "He was phenomenal. I can't say enough about him."

The Tigers will have all winter to contemplate the eight errors they made in the series, a record five by pitchers, one more ghastly than the last. The cover-your-eyes moment was committed last night by rookie Justin Verlander, who threw Weaver's bunt into left field past third baseman Brandon Inge, allowing Yadier Molina to score the tying run in the fourth, and putting the go-ahead run on third.

That run was delivered by David Eckstein, who drove in the Cardinals' first run with a broken-bat infield hit and scored the game's final run by reaching when Tigers shortstop Carlos Guillen double-clutched on his infield hit in the seventh.

In winning, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa joined Sparky Anderson as the only managers to win a World Series in both leagues. La Russa won with the Oakland Athletics in 1989.

"They are good," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said of the Cardinals, singling out his close friends La Russa and general manager Walt Jocketty as he offered congratulations. "They deserved it, and quite frankly we just didn't do the things that were conducive to winning a World Series.

"I just hope that nobody forgets the job we did, the players I'm talking about, to go from 71 wins to the World Series."

Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski, who had assembled the pieces of a team that looked unstoppable in running off seven straight wins against the Yankees and Athletics in the American League playoffs, was stopped in the hallway by baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who offered his hand.

"We want to be back," Dombrowski said to Selig.

The Tigers nearly sent the series back to Motown when they placed the tying runs on base in the ninth inning against Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals' rookie closer. With one out, Sean Casey doubled, his third hit of the night, and was replaced by pinch runner Ramon Santiago.

Ivan Rodriguez, on a checked swing, tapped to Wainwright for the second out, bringing up Placido Polanco, who went 0 for 17 in the series. Polanco, who was robbed of a hit earlier in the game by Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, godfather to his 3-year-old son, drew a walk.

That brought up Inge, whose double had saddled Wainwright with a blown save in Game 4. Wainwright, who had frozen Carlos Beltran with a called third strike to end the National League Championship Series, this time threw three nasty sliders to Inge, who went down swinging.

"I'll probably never throw another curve or slider again without thinking of those moments," said Wainwright, who was pressed into service as closer in September when Jason Isringhausen had hip surgery, and did not allow a run in nine postseason appearances, in which he recorded a win and four saves.

The Cardinals became just the second team to win as many as 10 World Series, joining the Yankees, who have won 26. To do so, they reversed some unseemly history that went well beyond being swept by the Red Sox in 2004.

Three times in the past 21 years, the Cardinals had taken a 3-1 lead in a postseason series, and three times they had dropped the last three games to go home losers. And it wasn't even close. In the 1996 NLCS, they held a 3-1 lead over the Braves and were outscored, 32-1. In the 1985 World Series, they held a 3-1 lead over the Royals and were outscored, 19-2, in the last three games, though that failure deserves an asterisk. And in 1968, against the Tigers, they were outscored, 22-5, in Games 5-7 , with Mickey Lolich outdueling Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in the finale.

"This is wonderful," Gibson said last night. "This is the ultimate."

"Leave it to Weaver," was the sign one Cardinals fan toted into the ballpark last night. Who would have imagined that Weaver would deliver against the Tigers what Gibson was unable to do in '68.

"We always believed we had a chance to win," said Preston ( step son of Mookie) Wilson, another spare part picked up by Jocketty during the season. "We never believed what other people were saying, what other people were writing. There was something said that we were going to be swept in three games.

"But all those people were outside our clubhouse. We believed in what we had, and we went out and did it."