The St. Louis Cardinals' Game 6 hero is their 2011 World Series MVP: David Freese, whose game-tying RBI double kept the Cardinals from falling to anticlimax in Game 7, earned his second piece of postseason hardware after a night in which he claims to have gotten 45 minutes of sleep.
David Freese's postseason performance has made it, to say the least, a little more difficult to justify trading him and installing Matt Carpenter at third base. After homering and driving in five runs in the Cardinals' NLDS upset of the Philadelphia Phillies he went 12-22 against the Milwaukee Brewers, driving in nine runs, homering three times, and earning the NLCS MVP Award. But it was his performance in Game 6 of the World Series that will put him in the Cardinals' record books forever.
With the Cardinals down two runs in the bottom of the ninth—down to their last out, their last strike—Freese tripled over Nelson Cruz's head to tie the game and set Busch Stadium afire. In the bottom of the 11th Freese broke another tie with a walkoff home run to dead center field, setting up the first World Series Game 7 since 2002.
But he didn't stop there. In Game 7, the Cardinals blindsided by the Rangers' two-run opener against Chris Carpenter, Freese came through again, doubling in his 20th and 21st RBI of the postseason—an all-time record.