On Sunday, the Cardinals dispatched of the Brewers, 12-6, to punch their ticket to the World Series to face the Rangers. The Fall Classic features a rare matchup in which neither team has much experience playing against the other.

Rangers starting pitchers carried the ballclub through the regular season but have struggled in the playoffs. Their ability to turn it around could be crucial against the red-hot Cardinals in the World Series.

The broadcast schedule for the 107th World Series has officially been set. First pitch in all the games between the American League champion Texas Rangers and the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals will be at 8:05 p.m. ET on FOX.

The Cardinals are in the World Series largely thanks to their ace, Chris Carpenter, who has led them all autumn with their season on the brink. The Rangers are in the World Series largely in spite of their ace, C.J. Wilson, whose brilliant regular season has been obscured by playoff hiccups.

Rangers manager Ron Washington announced Monday that C.J. Wilson will be his starter for Game 1 of the World Series, opposite the Cardinals' Chris Carpenter, on Wednesday night at Busch Stadium.

Miguel Cabrera's first offseason task is expected to be a visit with doctors to make sure the injury to his right shoulder, that he revealed after their American League Championship Series loss, is truly a minor one. Assuming it is, his next assignment will be more baseball on an international stage.

In the World Series, the brute force of the lineup and a good-enough pitching staff will make the American League's Rangers the favorite to win it all. But it would be unwise to dismiss the chances of St. Louis, which features a formidable slugger headlining a surging lineup and a legendary manager's flourishes of creativity with bullpen arms and bench players.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland was still so exhausted from his own team's postseason that he had trouble staying awake to watch his good friend Tony La Russa manage his way through Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. With all the pitching changes, it's not easy on him, either.

Major League Baseball, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden will recognize veterans and their families prior to the start of the 2011 World Series.

David Freese may have just put his name in the national consciousness with his MVP-winning performance in the NLCS, but his Cardinals teammates weren't surprised in the least.

Jon Lester became the first Red Sox pitcher to publicly confirm that he and other starters drank beer in the clubhouse during games in which they weren't pitching.

On paper, or on the mound, the Cardinals don't have the pitching that the Giants did last October. So in the 2011 World Series, it's a Texas walkover, a Rangers romp, a laugher, a no-contest, a Fall Classic runaway? No, no, no.

Frank and Jamie McCourt have reached a divorce settlement that gives Frank McCourt full ownership of the Dodgers, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

Only one previous postseason series had ever seen teammates each collect as many as six extra-base hits, as Albert Pujols and David Freese did in the NLCS: the 1993 World Series, in which the Blue Jays' Paul Molitor and Devon White each had six in a six-game Series against the Phillies.

With their 12-6 win over the Brewers in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday, the Cardinals can now go with their ace Chris Carpenter in the opener of the World Series.

The Rangers and Cardinals got this far because their relievers carried them. And now — considering how much their starting rotations have struggled and how fearsome their lineups are — we can probably look forward to a lot more bullpen usage between the Rangers and Cardinals.

When the Cardinals made two trades in late July to fortify their 2011 playoff chances, the description of the deals as "win-now" moves was almost pejorative. Turns out, that characterization was downright clairvoyant.