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This is one of the great win probability charts you'll ever see in the World Series.  You can open a second window-tab and see the right version of it here.  (And Fangraphs' robust game charts have gone from "great" to "mind-boggling.")

Take a moment and picture the fans' emotions at various points on the chart:

(1) Down 1-0 in the first, with Andrus and Hamilton on ... St. Louis already faced 5:2 odds against.  

But they came back to take a 2-1 lead.  From a queasy, sinking feeling to vast relief.

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(2) Napoli bats in Cruz in the 4th to give the Rangers the lead.  Cardinal fans at the park knew, intuitively, that at that moment, they'd probably lose the game. ... they faced a 5:3 dice roll against them on the evening.  

But the Cards did, improbably, tie the game right there in the bottom of the inning.

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(3) Young doubled in Josh Hamilton with the lead run in the 5th.  Young was in scoring position.  Again the Cards' chances were in the 20%'s.  For the third time on the night, death looked -- and was -- probable.

Once more the Cardinals tied it at 4-4 and, with a big rally going, the Cards' fans sensed their 71% chance to win.

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4) In the 7th, Cruz' home run slashed the Cards' throats, and slashed their WE to 17%.  Three chances were all the Cards were going to get...

By the 9th inning, with Felix on the mound, the Cardinals' chances were down to 4%.  That's about like telling you that unless you roll 12 with two dice, you're going to the guillotine.

The Cardinals rolled their 12.  Nelson Cruz failed to catch a fairly easy fly ball, and the Rangers were (for once) paying the price for the big lumbering HR man in right field.

As you might have heard, the Cards tossed Feliz into the deep freese and survived to extras.

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5) Josh Hamilton hit the home run that seemed scripted, way back when he got that first tatoo on the road to perdition.  AGAIN!!! The Cardinals' chances to win power-dove to 7%.

Hand me two dice, and tell me to roll an 11 or a 12, or I die on any 2-10 roll?  And I'm better off than the Cards were in the bottom of the 10th.

Berkman's lefty shot into right-center was a Rembrandt in baseball history.  

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From here, both sides still had a 50%* chance to lose ... when Freese went deep, the Cardinals' chances to win gained about 1% per 0.1 seconds the ball was in the air.

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oves blowouts in his team's favor.  Give him a choice and he'll take a 13-2 win on Opening Day next year...

Still, have you ever meditated on the way that a life valley can --- > sharpen your taste for triumph and blessing?

Would Nelson Mandela's presidency, honors, and acclaims have been as sweet if he hadn't rotted in prison for 27 years?

In the Johannine account, what part did John's three days of misery play in his later joy?  If he spent three days suffering miserably under the impression that his Messiah had been killed and disposed of?  The three days of darkness were required, before he'd be able to load his gospel script with the emotion that it contains.

Winning 116 games in 2011 was awesome.  But were the emotions equal to those in 1995, when the Mariners were 13 games down and climbed back to accomplish the impossible?  ... or would the Edgar Double vs. NYY have tasted the same, if the M's hadn't been down two games and then 5-0 in the third game?

A valued local author is given a 10%, 20% (?) survival prognosis and then, having received the prayers of hundreds or thousands, including ours at SSI of course ... a few short months later, is told he's totally cancer-free.  Now that would fill the coming 50 years of life with bright colors.  

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It's a funny thing.  Only when you have a 7% chance of winning, does the winning then taste like it did for the Cards on Thursday night.

Sports are inherently childish and silly, but in the best sense.  Human beings spend many hours each day in imaginary places.  Watching baseball, we (those of us not among the 50 people on the active rosters) imagine ourselves at battle.

Others use books, or movies, or daydreaming.  We use baseball.  I prefer baseball to movies and books, precisely because it's not scripted and because it is laced with real-time, dynamic free will. 

Baseball is imaginary land for me, but there is nothing imaginary about the human emotions that baseball causes.  Those emotions are every bit as real as they would be, if baseball meant anything.  

Psalm 30 is the one that explains the weeping at night, followed by the joy in the morning.  Everybody's cycle of life sines in and out of these phases.  The phases snap us out of lethargy and remind us that there are things we want, that there is meaning out there, that life is worth living.

Go Cards,

Jeff