Cards competed right to last pitch, Matheny

Boston (AFP) - Sometime between Shane Victorino's base-clearing double and Matt Carpenter's bungled run-down at first base, the St. Louis Cardinals realized this wasn't going to be their night.

Too much fatigue, too much terrific pitching from the Boston Red Sox and too much of David Ortiz's blistering bat.

"Right now, it sucks, to get here and lose," shortstop Daniel Descalso said after St. Louis lost 6-1 Wednesday to drop the World Series four games to two. "We did a lot of good things this year, but right now it's tough to think about that."

The Cardinals simply didn't have an answer for Ortiz. When they pitched to him early in the series Ortiz got on base consistently and when they tried walking him in game six, his teammates picked up the slack.

"He is as hot as anyone you are going to see this time of year," said St. Louis manager Mike Matheny. "We tried to pitch around him at times. They got big hits in big situations."

With the season on the line, St. Louis went with rookie hurler Michael Wacha as their starter Wednesday. Wacha lasted 3 2/3 innings and surrendered four runs on six hits.

"This kid has been absolutely fantastic," Matheny said of Wacha. "We are not here if he doesn't do what he's done for us over the postseason."

Matheny said he couldn't be more proud of his charges.

"There are some frustrated guys in there but overall you can't ask us to go about any better than our guys did.

"How they carried themselves. How they competed. But we did have a couple of games that we just didn't look like ourselves offensively."

St. Louis found itself in this same position back in 2011, but rallied to win games six and seven. However, those games were played at Busch Stadium.

The Cardinals were taking aim at their second World Series title in three years. They beat Boston in the World Series in 1946 and 1967.

"It stinks to get this far and lose," said pitcher Jason Motte. "But a lot of these guys came up and showed what they're capable of."

The strangest moment of Wednesday's game for the Cardinals was when second baseman Carpenter and pitcher Kevin Siegrist botched a routine rundown of Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury in the fifth inning.

Ellsbury appeared to be caught off the bag in no man's land but he raced past the pair and safely made it back to first base. Carpenter was slapped with an error on the play.

Said Matheny, "I told them to hold their head high. They have nothing to be ashamed of.

"We all know that we could come out and play a better game than what we did here, but we did a whole lot more than anybody gave us credit for or expected us to do.

"There's a lot of things that they can look on in a negative way, but this isn't the time for it."

• Baseball
• Sports & Recreation
• Boston Red Sox
• Mike Matheny
• David Ortiz
• Matt Carpenter

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cards-competed-last-pitch-matheny-135056984--mlb.html
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