They compiled a good part of that record with some combination of Jim Edmonds, David Eckstein and Scott Rolen at best hurting and at worst out of the lineup, plus a disaster of a pitching staff. By the playoffs, those three position players were healthy enough to contribute, manager Tony La Russa had cobbled together a bullpen that did great work in the playoffs, and Jeff Weaver had been plucked off the scrapheap.

Knowing everything I know now, if I had to pick the Series winner again I'd make the same pick I made 10 days ago -- Tigers in six. But it's not as if the Cardinals came out of nowhere.

Eckstein won the award after going 8-for-22 with three doubles -- all in the pivotal Game 4 -- and a walk, three runs scored and four batted in. If I were Scott Rolen and I cared about such things, which I probably wouldn't, I'd be a little miffed.

Consider that Rolen had the same number of hits in three fewer at-bats, the same number of doubles, one more walk, one more home run and two more runs scored. Eckstein did have two more RBIs. Also consider that two of Eckstein's doubles, and one of his RBIs, in Game 4 were gifts of the Detroit outfielders, one coming on Craig Monroe's misplay and the other when Curtis Granderson slipped on the wet grass and couldn't recover in time to catch Eckstein's fairly routine fly ball.

And then there's Jeff Weaver, who pitched two beautiful ballgames, allowing five runs, four earned, in 13 innings while striking out 14 and walking two. He got outpitched by Smudgy Rogers in Game 2, but won Game 5.

Weaver should call Livan Hernandez and ask him how he did it. Hernandez won the MVP in 1997 when he pitched reasonably well once and horribly once, but got 15 runs of support and two wins to go with his 5.27 ERA. Darren Daulton, Gary Sheffield and Charles Johnson all hit roughly as well as Eckstein in that Series, which the Florida Marlins won with hitting, not pitching.

Verlander had been struggling since early September, and as a rookie pitcher who had exceeded his previous career high in innings pitched, he was right on schedule to keep on struggling. Bonderman had been pitching well.

There's some logic in that, but I think that when you're fighting for your life, you take your best shot, and Rogers had been dynamite all month. Verlander, the Game 5 starter, had merely been gasoline.

After a shaky start, Verlander didn't acquit himself poorly Friday, leaving the game after six innings with the Cardinals leading 3-2, thanks to two unearned runs courtesy of Verlander's throwing error. The Tigers lost Game 5 because they didn't score enough, not because they didn't pitch well enough.

But who knows what might have happened had Rogers had another great game and allowed the Tigers to get back home for the last two games. It's a terrible thing to die with arrows in your quiver, and the Tigers went down with a fully rested pitcher sitting in the dugout on a 23-inning shutout streak.

A big part of the problem was the huge role inclement weather played in turning the games into something quite different from the diverting sport played in warmer parts of the calendar.

There are about a hundred ways commissioner Bud Selig could solve the problem of baseball stretching too late into the fall. Odds against Selig actually enacting one of them are too great for the human mind to comprehend.

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