Baseball, Texas Rangers | featured news

Major League Baseball, which has been investigating the link of performance-enhancing drugs to players with South Florida ties for much of the last year, may be faced with its most significant doping case since the BALCO scandal rocked the sport one decade ago. All-Stars Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, pitcher Gio Gonzalez of the Washington Nationals, Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers and Melky Cabrera of the Toronto Blue Jays, along with other MLB players and athletes in other sports, were strongly connected to performance-enhancing drug use in an investigative report by the Miami New Times.

Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, announced Monday he is retiring after 33 seasons as a manager in professional baseball. The Cardinals capped an improbable comeback last week by defeating the Texas Rangers to win the World Series.

The Cardinals, who made the postseason with the fewest wins, 90, of any playoff team, won their 11th World Series title by beating the Rangers in a series that went all seven games.

David Freese homered to lead off the bottom of the 11th inning, and the St. Louis Cardinals forced the World Series to a Game 7 by rallying from two-run deficits against the Texas Rangers in the 9th and 10th on Thursday night.

MLB announced that tonight’s scheduled Game 6 of the World Series has been postponed because of expected rain in St. Louis. Cardinals and Rangers officials learned of the early postponement during an afternoon conference call with MLB. Light rain has been falling throughout the day in St. Louis and various weather reports peg the chances of rain tonight at 75-90 percent. Rather than attempt to play through the bad weather and perhaps get stuck having to delay the game after several innings they’ll push Game 6 to Thursday night and schedule a potential Game 7 for Friday night.

The Texas Rangers moved one win from their first World Series title with a victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 5. The deafening chants of “Nap-O-Li! Nap-O-Li!” rang out from the 51,549 fans before and after the key eighth-inning at-bat, sounding like the Sunday afternoon cheers for the Italian soccer team.

Derek Holland pitched into the ninth inning as Texas tied the World Series at two games apiece with a shutout.

Albert Pujols began the game hoping to shake his slump and maybe get a hit. He did that, and a whole lot more: He produced the defining game of his monster career, and perhaps the greatest hitting performance in World Series history.

The starting pitcher had carried the game all the way to the seventh inning, a rare luxury for the St. Louis Cardinals this postseason, and with a one-run lead and nine outs to go, the 46,406 in attendance Wednesday night at Busch Stadium, home of the savviest fans in baseball, could practically pinch-manage the rest of Game 1 of the World Series for Tony La Russa.

Michael Young drove in five runs for the Rangers, who are going back to the World Series, and this time they would appear to be the favorite to win it.