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Great article. I love reading about the thought process a baseball player goes through.

When the bottom of the ninth began with the Cardinals down two and Neftali Feliz on the mound, it looked as if all that was left was the defeathering. With two on and one out, Freese watched from the on-deck circle as Allen Craig struck out looking. "I'm walking up to the plate going, Geez, what an awesome spot to be in, never having faced Feliz in my life, and that guy is just nasty," Freese says. The flame-throwing righty started Freese off with two sliders. "I'm thinking, This is not fun," he says. Freese swung through the third pitch, a fastball that allowed him to adjust his timing. Down 1 and 2, he looked for a fastball middle away and got it. Rightfielder Nelson Cruz was playing in. Off the bat Freese heard the home crowd erupt, but he was running so hard he didn't see the play. When they erupted again, he knew it had fallen. He hit third base on his knees. "I knew where my family was sitting, so I looked up and saw my mom losing her mind," Freese says.



What happened next was bonkers. Leading off the 11th, Freese told himself to just get on. He worked the count to 3 and 0 against Mark Lowe but realized there was no way he'd get the green light. The next pitch was a ball the umpire called a strike, which kept Freese in the batter's box, albeit peeved. He took a good cut on 3 and 1 but missed. Down to his last strike, again, Freese remembered Lowe had struck out teammate Lance Berkman on a devastating changeup earlier in the series. He hadn't seen it yet, so he geared up for it. "People ask if I was trying to hit a home run, but every time in my life I've tried to do that, I've grounded out to third," says Freese. "I was just trying to put the ball in play." He did, sort of. It landed over the centerfield fence. The Cardinals took the Series the next night, and Freese's life changed again.