The St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers will meet for Game 1 of the 2011 World Series Wednesday night at 7:05 CDT, when Chris Carpenter and C.J. Wilson face off in Busch Stadium—the Cardinals having dispatched Home Field Advantage conqueror Prince Fielder in the NLCS. The game will be on FOX, which is cold comfort for Cardinals fans who've had to deal all month with the limited commercial breaks and intermittently poor announcing on TBS (Very Funny.)
C.J. Wilson takes the mound for the Rangers having struggled in three postseason starts—an ERA just under nine, with six home runs allowed—but coming off a career year in which he struck out 206 batters and made his first All-Star team. Carpenter's thrown two mediocre starts in the playoffs, worried the Cardinals with some apparently inconsequential elbow pain, and, in the middle of all that, threw a brilliant shutout against the Philadelphia Phillies to push the Cardinals into the National League Championship Series.
The Rangers will be sending Japanese baseball refugee Colby Lewis out in Game 2 at Busch Stadium, while the Cardinals are likely to play their home-road splits hunch and bring out 25-year-old Jaime Garcia in the last game before a flight that may or may not turn out Happy.