Didn't I say whenever I blogged about the Cardinals' success something bad happened to them? So go ahead, blame it all on me, I can take it.

But, you know, part of me is not so sad. After all, the Cardinals have won a World Series in my lifetime, not that I was old enough to remember. And if the Red Sox didn't win one soon, ESPN.com's baseball coverage was going to be nothing but people whining about the Curse and the Yankees payroll. [This is nothing against the Red Sox themselves, whom I like. Their GM is 30 years old (and cute and single, hmmmm....). David Ortiz is hard to dislike, even when he's crushing hits off your pitcher. For some reason, I've always liked Pedro, don't ask me why.] That insanely intense media focus on "The Curse" even had me wondering if it would even be worth it for the Cardinals to win -- since, after all, the wrap-up stories would be less about how the Cards won than how the Red Sox lost again. OK, it would have been worth it. But you know what I mean.

I'm going to file Game 3 of this World Series in the same place I filed the Big XII 2003 football championship. Right under A for "Alternate Universe." Or maybe P for "Pod People." Because that's about the only thing I can think of to explain everything going wrong for such a good team at exactly the wrong time. Not that I don't have experience with this. I grew up rooting for Oklahoma State, for (Pistol) Pete's sake. (Sorry, sorry.) My high school lost in I don't know how many state finals while I was there-- most of the time to our archrivals. Not to mention OU's 2003 football team or OSU's 2004 men's basketball team. This is as much a part of sports as everything I wrote about in my last post.

And I still love my Cardinals.

And there's ALWAYS next year.