All the right moves

ST. LOUIS -- Since the wildcard's introduction to the baseball playoffs in 1995, the team with the best regular-season record has proceeded to win the World Series precisely three times.

The surprisingly low number underlines that the most dangerous teams once the post-season begins are those who are at their peak in the moment, not those who have performed best over the previous 162 games.

It's great to be able to win a marathon, but a champion must be able to win a sprint, too.

The St. Louis Cardinals, an afterthought when they trailed wild-card leading Atlanta by 10½ games Aug. 25, are once again driving that point home, getting the jump on the Texas Rangers with a 3-2 victory Wednesday night in Game 1 of the Fall Classic.

The hero on this night was 27-year-old utilityman Allen Craig, a pinch-hitter who broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth inning with a drive down the right-field line that eluded a sliding Nelson Cruz's glove by mere inches, allowing David Freese to come in with the go-ahead run.

Some handy work by the St. Louis bullpen, including two strikeouts by Marc Rzepczynski to quash a two-on, one-out Rangers rally in the seventh and a scoreless ninth by closer Jason Motte, kept things there before a roaring Busch Stadium crowd of 46,406.

Game 2 is Thursday night and Jamie Garcia can help put the Cardinals in command of the best-of-seven against Colby Lewis. If the opener was any indication, this could be a series to remember.

"For the last two months every game has been do or die for us," said Rzepczynski, who had little trouble with pinch-hitters Craig Gentry and Esteban German. "We got on a good streak in September, we're just taking it game by game, and it's been playoffs since then for us.

"That prepared us very well to get here."

Teams that have won Game 1 are 65-41 in the World Series, and the Cardinals are hoping the trend holds in the 107th clash for baseball supremacy.

The way they've been playing of late means the Rangers will have their hands full trying to prevent that from happening.

"We've lost before," said second baseman Ian Kinsler. "We went down 1-0 in our first series against Tampa and got beat up pretty bad. It's a long series -- not too long -- but it's a long series, we need to get on it (Thursday), come out with some fire and play a good game."

Both teams did that Wednesday, the Cardinals doing it just a little bit better.

Ace starters Chris Carpenter and C.J. Wilson swept away all the recent chatter about scorching-hot offences and dominant-but-overworked bullpens by keeping the bats locked down on a frigid night that started with a game-time temperature of nine degrees and dipped from there.

Neither club got much from its rotation in the last round, with Cardinals starters logging just 46 per cent of the team's innings during the six-game win over Milwaukee in the NLCS, the lowest percentage ever of any team winning a seven-game playoff series.

The Rangers weren't much better at 51 per cent, tied for the fourth-lowest total.

But both put up zeroes through the first three innings until St. Louis struck in the bottom of the fourth, when Wilson hit Albert Pujols with a pitch, Matt Holliday doubled and Lance Berkman -- who ate crow this week for his off-season description of the Cliff-Lee-less Rangers as "average" -- singled home both by poking an outside fastball down first base-line.

Michael Young was well off the bag, as the Rangers played Berkman -- batting right-handed at the time -- to pull.

Carpenter, however, gave the two runs right back in the fifth as Adrian Beltre singled and one-out later Mike Napoli ripped a two-run blast to knot things up.

Carpenter, who endured questions about his elbow after receiving some treatment to ease some soreness, was all business from the get-go, making a brilliant diving snag of a poor Pujols relay on Elvis Andrus' grounder, sliding into first to tag the bag. Equally impressive was the way he pulled in his hand to avoid getting stepped on.

"I think we need to work on that one next spring in (pitchers' fielding practice)," quipped Carpenter. "It was just an instinct, he threw that ball, it was a little out of my reach, and I dove. It worked out."

In all he went six innings, allowed two runs on five hits and a walk and four strikeouts, coming out of the game for Craig's pivotal at-bat.

"He was exactly what we needed," said Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Wilson only made it through 5.2 innings, getting pulled with two on and two out and Craig at the plate. Rangers manager Ron Washington turned to Alexi Ogando to face Craig, and the right-hander, so brilliant thus far, couldn't escape the jam after going ahead in the count 1-2.

"I had to make an adjustment there," said Craig, who swung through 96 and 97 m.p.h. fastballs before shooting a heater of 98 into right field. "You have to take what the other team is giving you."

Wilson allowed three runs on four hits and six walks, two intentional, striking out four, giving his team a chance to win on a night they couldn't get it done.

In the second a Napoli double-play grounder erased a two-on, one-out threat, while in the sixth, Kinsler reached second with one out but was stranded by Carpenter. The big blow that has come so often for the Rangers in these playoffs simply never came.

"I feel like we have to win the National-League style games if we're going to win this thing and tonight was a National-League style game, 3-2, good pitching, good defence, timely hitting," said Berkman. "And I don't think we want to get into a gorilla ball type series with these guys.

"We'll see what happens when we add the DH and go to the American League ballpark, but when we have the National League style and we have the advantage, we have to capitalize."

They did just that, and are now one step closer to an unlikely championship.

NOTES: The National League has not won consecutive World Series since a run of four straight 1979-82 (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dodgers and St. Louis). … The Rangers are the second expansion team to appear in back-to-back World Series, following in the footsteps of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992-93. … The team with home-field advantage has won 20 of the last 25 World Series, the '92 Jays among those bucking the trend.

Shi Davidi is the MLB Insider for sportsnet.ca. Come back to read his insight and opinion regularly.