That's A(n Eleven Time World Series) Winner!

I woke up this morning at ten a.m., because I am siiiiiiiick like death, and was checking my e-mail and saw the e-mail from the Cardinals where they encourage you to buy World Series Champion gear. And I scrolled through and thought "these World Champion shirts are not nearly as cute as the ones from 2006."

And then I thought "you spoiled, spoiled woman."

Because whining about your team's most recent World Series Champion shirt not being cute enough (and my related concern that my awesome "Got Rings?" shirt is now out of date) is just so unbelievably ungrateful.

And I am not ungrateful. I am happy like you wouldn't believe. But it's just buried right now under a pulsing sinus headache and a sore throat and a slight fever. It breaks through every once in awhile, like when I took the newspaper out of the bag this morning and saw the front page. But it's hard to process happiness when anything but being in a prone position hurts dreadfully.

I will say this: There are comebacks. And then there are improbable comebacks.

And then there are impossible comebacks, and after that there are things that only happen in the worst, most sentimental fictions.

And then there's what the 2011 Cardinals did.

In Thomas Boswell's column this morning, he speculates that for "generations in this baseball-as-secular-religion city, what the Birds did in the last 65 days of this season will be retold with amazement and, perhaps someday, almost with a hint of skepticism: Great-Grandpa might be embellishing a few details because, while some of this stuff could be true, surely all of it couldn’t. Yet it was."

Last night I got to congratulate a friend and fellow Cardinals fan on his infant son's first World Championship. I know that this kid will never have any memories of 2011, not even the vague, hazy ones I have of 1982. But I also know that it will be part of him and his story forever.

So let's get to the scores, shall we? We cleaned up pretty damn good in this round, with JCD, Tyler, Colleen and the Washington Post all getting the full 12 points for getting both the winning team and the correct number of games. JES and I each get 8 points for the right team. And Rob and FOX Sports get nothing. They leave empty handed. Just like the Texas Rangers.

Which means that the final rankings for this year are:

WaPo: 30 points
Colleen: 24 points

JCD: 24 points

Tyler: 20 points

JordanBaker: 17 points.

FOX: 16 points

Rob: 11 points

JES: 8 points

And with WaPo's win, the all time rankings look like this:

2011: Washington Post (30)

2010: Tyler (19)

2009: Beefy Muchacho (34)

2008: I-66 (18)

2007: FOX (20)

2006: JordanBaker (23)

And still we have no one who's won more than one year, and Beefy Muchacho is still the all time record holder.

But you will notice that by sheer fluke of when I started this little competition, the list is beautifully bookended by years when the Cardinals won, right?

See you next year, kids.