The Kansas City Star, Mo., Joe Posnanski column: Detroit throws it away.(Column)

Byline: Joe Posnanski

Oct. 27--ST. LOUIS -- All his long life, Buck O'Neil wondered why major-league pitchers are told to let their teammates catch all pop flies. He said it just didn't make sense. These pitchers were all the best athletes in their neighborhoods growing up. They were bigger, stronger and faster than anyone -- and probably the best fielders, too. "Why is it when they get to the big leagues, suddenly they're not even allowed to catch pop-ups?" Buck wondered. Well, this World Series has given us our answer. The St. Louis Cardinals are on the brink of winning their first World Series since Michael Jackson released the album "Thriller." And the big reason seems to be that the Detroit Tigers pitchers cannot field at all. America hasn't seen this many errors since WindowsME was released. Joe Garagiola always said it: Baseball is a funny game. In the million stories previewing this Series and the millions of hours talking heads spent predicting what might happen, I suspect nobody wrote or said, "Well, it will come down to how well the Tigers' pitchers field the ball." But there's the story. In game one, with the game still close, starter Justin Verlander threw wildly on a pickoff throw. Albert Pujols, who was on first, ran to third. He scored. The Cardinals won. In game two, reliever Todd Jones booted Juan Encarnacion's grounder, which led to a run and a very scary ninth inning for the Tigers. In game three, reliever Joel Zumaya made his star turn. He walked two Cardinals and then faced Pujols. The stadium was alive. Zumaya threw his 100-plus fastball, Pujols bounced the ball right back to him. At that point, anything was possible. A double play. A Tigers victory. And you could see every single circuit in Zumaya's brain popped at once. He turned to throw the ball to third -- third! -- and he threw it about 287 mph, and he threw it about 20 feet wide of third baseman Brandon Inge. Other than that, he did everything just right. Two runs scored. The Cardinals won. And then came game four. The Tigers understood the significance of this game -- few teams have ever come back from 3-1 down -- and they played with passion early. They led the game 3-0 in the third inning. The Cardinals then scraped together a couple of runs and were down just one going into the seventh. That's when the shenanigans began. Isn't "shenanigans" a great word? David Eckstein led off the inning with a fairly deep fly ball to center field. Detroit center fielder Curtis Granderson ran back to get the ball and then slipped and fell. He rolled around in the grass and jumped back to his feet. It was too late, and Eckstein was on second. We should interrupt for a second to say this play led several older ...