Playoff bound once again

[love_that_reefer]

Sorry Leo but we were talking about this being the last season of the Cards winning the Central and when you have the best player and best pitcher to build around, you just can't say things like that. There is no reason to think that. We were not talking about being the most dominant team. When you have Carpenter leading the way much like Santana, you aren't going to fall far from the tree. When you Pujols and Rolen for years to come, same thing.

[redsrbetter]

ST. LOUIS -- Never before have so many Cardinals fans been so fond of the Braves.
While the Cardinals took on Milwaukee at Busch Stadium on Sunday afternoon, St. Louis benefited from an Atlanta win over Houston at Turner Field. That outcome secured the Cardinals' third straight National League Central division championship. It's the first time since the 1940s that the Cardinals have been outright division champions in three straight seasons.
It was the Astros' second loss in three days against the Braves. On Friday night, when Atlanta beat Houston while the Cards and Brewers were playing at Busch Stadium, as word of the Braves' success spread around the ballpark, Cardinals fans began "tomahawk chop" chants in honor of Atlanta.
The road to the postseason certainly wasn't easy, and it was rarely pretty. But the Cards never let their lead slip away at the end of the season. They held at least a share of first place every day from June 9 until the end of the year. The lead slipped to as small as one-half game following Friday night, but Houston never took control.
"It's good enough to get in," center fielder Jim Edmonds said on Sunday morning. "All along, we said we just hoped to get a chance to play in the playoffs. ... It doesn't matter how you get in, as long as you get in."
For the first time in five years, the Cardinals made it into the postseason in the waning days of the campaign. In each of their past three championship seasons -- 2005, 2004 and 2002 -- they had the division salted away in time to set up the playoff rotation and rest players.
This time around, it's been a grind to the finish. A seven-game skid put the Cardinals' lead in jeopardy just long enough to catch the attention of observers all around baseball, but two wins and two Astros losses over the past three days finished the chase off.
"I just think that we've been digging into it for five months and three weeks," manager Tony La Russa said recently. "So you get in the habit of going there and knowing there's something there. That's one of the beauties of being in contention."
The Redbirds now avoid having to play Monday. Thanks to a rainout earlier in September, a makeup game against the Giants loomed if the division race had not been decided by the end of the day Sunday. Instead, the club will work out on Monday, and begin preparing for the first round.
It will be a few hours before St. Louis knows who it will face, but most likely it will be San Diego. If the Padres win on Sunday, or if the Dodgers lose, or both, the Padres will be NL West champions. If Los Angeles wins and San Diego loses, the Dodgers will win the West. The Cardinals will play the champion, with the other West contender winning the Wild Card and playing the Mets in the Division Series. The Cardinals have had great success in the Division Series round, but usually they've opened at home. In six trips to the DS, they've won five of the series. However, only twice have they not had home-field advantage, including the one year they were eliminated -- 2001 against Arizona.

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/a...=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Great article there and congratulations to the Cards! They do it again, but this time it was in a very excitable fashion. Talk about goi8ng down to the wire. These guys had to dig deep after playing some horrible baseball the last few weeks. But they did make it and now it is time to prepare for them to go somewhere.

I am following the Cards this postseason, who is coming with me?