The only way Cardinal fans might feel worse is if Albert Pujols had hit the walk-off homer that ended the season.
That would have created trauma for a St. Louis baseball fan not felt perhaps since Game Six of the 1985 World Series. That one swung on a safe-or-out play at first base in the ninth inning that umpire Don Denkinger appeared to call incorrectly. The Cardinals unraveled in Game Seven the following night and Kansas City, generally outplaying its favored Missouri rival, won its first world championship.
But to have Pujols deliver the dagger blow Wednesday night would have been too much. Not even the baseball gods, ever capricious (if they exist), could be that cruel.
Playing on an October stage, the Cardinals and Dodgers were 1-1 going to the home half of the ninth inning in the National League Wild-Card game. At stake was a trip to San Francisco for a division-series opener. The losing team, if it played well enough, would be remembered for giving a nice try.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, seizing the moment for all it was worth, knowing that the game could end on one swing, sent Pujols up to bat in the ninth inning. And who better than the fifth-leading home-run hitter in major-league history: Only Barry Bonds (762), Henry Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714) and Alex Rodriguez (689) have hit more than Pujols, the active leader at 679.
At 41, Pujols was signed by the Dodgers for just such a moment after nine years with the Los Angeles Angels. Pujols went west after 12 years with the Cardinals, for whom he won three Most Valuable Player awards and two World Series titles. St. Louis, a National League team (that is, without the designated hitter), was unwilling to pay for decline years of Pujols' career. A few days after the Cardinals' heart-throbbing seven-game Series win over the Texas Rangers, Pujols signed a contract that only an American League team (one with the DH) could justify.
Pujols has been treated like a hero on trips to Busch Stadium with both LA teams. Now wearing No. 55, rather than the No. 5 (Joe DiMaggio's number; Brooks Robinson's, too) he made famous in St. Louis, Pujols will slide into the Hall of Fame without a throw five years after his retirement.
Even so, it is difficult for a Cardinal fan to consider Pujols one of the franchise's Core Four players. Who does one leave off that list -- Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith? -- to include Pujols? Then again, such are the rewards for one who backs a team with an NL-record 11 World Series titles.
Players on both sides imagined the possibilities when Pujols came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth. "We all thought Albert was gonna hit a home run," Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner said. "It couldn't have been written any better."
Sorry to spoil that made-in-Hollywood script, but Pujols filed out to center. And one thought of what the late Jack Buck might have said in the broadcast booth, "The Cardinals can only win this game in extra innings." That prospect loomed when Steven Souza Jr. lined out in about the same spot.
This four-hour game this one did not stay unresolved much longer. Cody Bellinger, a past National League MVP, drew a walk, then stole a base, giving Los Angeles a chance to win with something less than a home run.
When reliever Alex Reyes hung a slider out over the plate, Chris Taylor sent it to the left-field bleachers. Dodgers 3, Cardinals 1, and we'll see you in San Francisco.
Like Kirk Gibson, who went deep to right with a backdoor slider from Dennis Eckersley in Game One of the 1988 World Series (prompting Buck to say, "I can't believe that I just saw") Chris Turner started this game on the bench. A neck injury and late-season batting slump had rendered him ineffective. An All-Star player for the first time this year, Turner had manager Roberts' back in the biggest game of the season.
"The game honors you," Roberts said. "He wanted to be in there tonight, but he was ready when called upon."
And thus the Dodgers move on, which perhaps is fitting. A team that wins 106 games in the regular season -- most by a defending World Series champion since the '39 Yankees -- deserves that much, I guess.
But ever if a losing team deserved kudos, it is these Cardinals, two games under .500 at the All-Star break but authoring a 17-game winning streak in September. Citing the law of averages, some Cardinal fans even welcomed a streak-snapping loss to Milwaukee last week.
Veteran Adam Wainwright, a 17-game winner, started Wednesday night's game on the mound and outlasted Cy Young Award favorite Max Scherzer. Yadier Molina, a first-ballot Hall of Famer some day, started behind the plate. With those two in the lineup, even with 16 fewer victories than the Dodgers, Cardinal Nation felt it had a good chance in the winner-take-all game.
No one ever said baseball is fair. Certainly not the Yankees, who spent all those millions on a pitcher who couldn't get past the second inning Tuesday night.
Still, losing one's last game in Dodger Stadium must go down easier for the Cardinals than for the Yankees against the Red Sox in Fenway Park. An F8 in the scorebook for Pujols in the ninth inning Wednesday night made the game more bearable.