St Louis Cardinals: History Suggests That They Will Win the 2011 World Series.

The Texas Rangers lost an epic Game 6 to the St Louis Cardinals on Thursday night, and a World Series that has featured all sorts of twists and turns experienced all sorts of twists and turns in just one game.

This game—one that will go down in baseball lore as one of the greatest ever played—started out sloppily, got worse and then turned into a tense nail-biter that had even casual fans unable to pry themselves away from the TV.

Anything could happen—and on this night, everything would.

The Rangers have to be kicking themselves over and over as they try to come to grips with how close they were to baseball nirvana—and not just once, but twice.

They showed their resiliency after Neftali Feliz, one of the game's brightest and most electric young stars, blew a save in gut-wrenching style in the bottom of the ninth. 

The Rangers again blew a two-run lead in the tenth after Josh Hamilton put them back ahead with a two-run home run.  The Cardinals refused to die on this night in the most spectacular of ways, and when David Freese's leadoff 11th-inning home run landed in the batter's eye in center field, St. Louis had the win.

They had forced a Game 7 that only a short time earlier had seemed inexplicable, and had taken every ounce of wind out of the Rangers' sails.

Can the Rangers recover from twice standing on the brink of victory and twice being knocked back down?  History suggests that they will have a difficult time doing so.

In 1986, the Boston Red Sox stood on the precipice of a World Series Championship when Bill Buckner made the error heard around the world, allowing the Mets to win that Game 6—a game New York had no business winning.

Although Boston held a lead in Game 7, the truth was that they had nothing left, and the Mets won the World Series.

Kirby Puckett hit a walk-off home run against the Atlanta Braves in the 11th inning of Game 6 of the 1991 World Series—one inning after he had preserved the tie with a gravity-defying catch against the wall in center field off the bat of Ron Gant with a runner on first base.

Atlanta was deflated after that loss, and although they forced extra innings again the next day, they lost the series when Twins pitcher Jack Morris turned in a pitching performance for the ages, throwing an 11-inning complete-game shutout.

The San Francisco Giants all but had their first ever title as residents of San Francisco in 2002, when they stood five outs away from beating the Angels in Anaheim in Game 6.

Their epic collapse in Game 6 was something they were unable to recover from, and the Angels won a Game 7 that felt as if its outcome had actually been determined the night before.

Ron Washington and the other leaders of the Rangers' clubhouse have their hands full today as the team tries to regroup and put the Game 6 loss behind them—something that the 1986 Red Sox, 1991 Atlanta Braves and the 2002 San Francisco Giants could not do. 

If history has anything to say about it, the St Louis Cardinals and their fans will be celebrating the franchise's 11th World Series championship tonight.