Nice to look at, but gem had some big flaws

Such a game deserves an appropriately improbable ending. Try this: An impeccable shortstop can't come up with a bouncer to his right with the score tied in the eighth inning, and a No. 9 hitter (albeit one with more than a little thump in his bat), who had hit the Yankee Stadium right-field foul pole in his final ALCS at-bat, hits the famed Pesky Pole for the winning two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth. It was 11-9, Red Sox, and it had to frighten both managers because the offenses were downright relentless.

"I sat here and said yesterday that the four teams in the Finals [an interesting terminology, don't you think?] were the four best lineups," said St. Louis's Tony La Russa. "Unless you pitch really good, you're gonna get damaged."

"That was not an instructional video for the Instructional League," said Boston's Terry Francona. "But we persevered and won, which is what we set out to do. We made some mistakes today. There are things we need to clean up."

One thing he doesn't have to alter is his lineup. Once again, Mark Bellhorn justified his daily presence there, for he was the man who hit that winning homer. "If you've watched us all year, he's been a really good player for us," Francona said. "He's been a clutch player who has had a lot of game-winning hits. We all feel good about him."

Bellhorn was an automatic out supreme in the beginning of the Yankees series, but he started showing an offensive pulse with two hits in Game 5. He had the big three-run homer in Game 6 and he had that solo homer in Game 7. Last night, in addition to the big blow off Julian Tavarez in the eighth, he had a single, two walks, and three runs scored.

Bellhorn came up in the eighth with Jason Varitek on first, thanks to an Edgar Renteria error. There was a fair amount of irony in play here, given that the Red Sox had committed four astonishingly ugly errors, two of those by Manny Ramirez, who, as one wag pointed out, hit .600 and fielded .333 in this affair. The Cardinals are baseball's best defensive team, and Renteria is an excellent shortstop. The play in question was a ball hit to his right that forced him to use his backhand. Calling it an error was a borderline call. But it was a play a Cardinal is supposed to make, and this was a bad time for him not to be a proper Cardinal.