That's a winner!

My earliest baseball memory is watching Bruce Sutter strike out Gorman Thomas to win the 1982 World Series. I remember watching it on the big cabinet TV set in my childhood living room and sitting way too close the screen. When the Cards won in '82 they played Celebration by Kool & the Gang, a song so rad I thought it had been written especially for the Cardinals victory.

Now, I'm not the most faithful Cardnials fan. In fact, I was an adamant non-sports fan of any sort all during high school. But I don't think you can grow up in St. Louis without developing some appreciation of baseball. Just like you're expected to like toasted ravioli, you're expected to develop a passing understanding of the game.

I didn't follow baseball closely this year and missed most of the post-season when I was traveling. But I loved watching every out of the World Series and the last two innings of tonight's game was the most stressed I've been in the past couple months. I was IMing with Sutter in New Zealand for most of the game, relaying (mostly unneeded) updates to his dark corner of the Internet. And 24 years after Bruce Sutter's strikeout, Adam Wainwright fanned Brandon Inge to make the Cardinals the Champions of the World once again.

Good times.