Cards’ downfall could be traced to September

Injuries to Rolen, Carpenter proved pivotal to team with most wins in baseball

? It can be argued that the St. Louis Cardinals lost the World Series in mid-September, when Scott Rolen and Chris Carpenter went down because of injuries.

In the space of a week they lost their ace for the season, and their cleanup hitter was never the same after returning from a calf injury. Manager Tony La Russa refused to make excuses, but the rotation that ran out of gas and the lineup with a hole in the middle played large roles in the Boston Red Sox’s sweeping a team that had led the major leagues with 105 victories.

“What-if thinking, that’s so counterproductive,” La Russa said Thursday as players cleared their lockers at Busch Stadium.

Still, the Cardinals lost four in a row only once in the regular season, and that was when they were coasting at the end of the year.

Rolen led the major leagues in RBIs before straining his left calf Sept. 11. He returned after missing 16 games, in time for the end of the regular season, and had one big hit in the playoffs — his two-run go-ahead home run off Roger Clemens in Game 7 of the NL championship series.

Otherwise, he was a bust, going 12-for-75 after the injury. In the World Series, Rolen was 0-for-15, a symbol of the Cardinals’ stunning lack of production against a Red Sox staff that was not expected to be dominant.

St. Louis batted .190, was 4-for-28 with runners in scoring position and totaled three runs in the final three games. Jim Edmonds was 1-for-15 with no RBIs.

“When you have the aspiration as a little kid of playing in the World Series, throwing the ball up and hitting it, you at least sneak one hit in there in your backyard,” Rolen said.

But he added perspective indicating he wouldn’t let the failure linger: “I’m going to be a father shortly so that will hopefully go well, and maybe someday I’ll tell my little girl that I played in a World Series and didn’t get a hit.

“I think she’ll be all right with that.”

No one felt the sting of the loss more than Carpenter. He won 15 games in a brilliant comeback season after having missed 20 months while recuperating from a pair of shoulder operations. He would have been the team’s top starter in the playoffs had he not been lost because of nerve damage to his right biceps on Sept. 18 — the day the Cardinals clinched the NL Central.

Without him, only one of the four starters lasted long enough to qualify for a victory in the Series. Now, Carpenter has to go home to New Hampshire, not far from Boston, and hear all winter about how the Red Sox ended the Curse of the Bambino at the expense of the Cardinals.

La Russa confirmed Thursday that he would be back for a 10th season. Bill DeWitt Jr., the team’s general partner and chairman of the board, said after Wednesday’s Game 4 loss that he considered this La Russa’s best managing feat in St. Louis.

“I thought it was, I really did, and I told him so,” DeWitt said. “I thought he did a wonderful job.”