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October 9, 2011

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Cardinals, Brewers advance to NLCS

THE St Louis Cardinals produced a major upset by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 1-0 on Friday, eliminating the World Series favorites from the postseason and moving into the National League championship series.

Chris Carpenter tossed a shutout to give the Cardinals a famous victory in the decisive fifth game of their NL division series in Philadelphia.

St Louis scored the sole run in the first inning, when Rafael Furcal led off with a triple and Skip Schumaker followed with an RBI double.

And that was the end of the scoring. Heavily favored Philadelphia never broke through against Carpenter. Ryan Howard grounded out to end the game, crumpling to the ground with a leg injury and being carried to the dugout as St Louis started to celebrate.

The Cardinals are the most unlikely team to have made it into the final four. They needed a monumental collapse by Atlanta in the final month of the regular season just to pip the Braves to the wildcard spot.

Now they're heading to Milwaukee for the NL championship series starting tomorrow after beating three of Philadelphia's formidable four-ace pitching rotation: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt.

"We put ourselves into position where everybody was expecting us to have no chance and we just started playing like the team we knew we were," Carpenter said. "And we were fortunate to get some help back into it with Atlanta losing and we were playing well the rest of that month."

Three of baseball's four opening-round matchups went to a deciding Game 5, and all of them were pitching-rich thrillers. The Detroit Tigers held off the New York Yankees 3-2 on Thursday, and the Brewers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks in 10 innings on Friday.

In Milwaukee, Nyjer Morgan drove in the winning run in the 10th, grounding a ball straight past Diamondbacks closer JJ Putz and Carlos Gomez sprinted home from second base to comfortably beat a wild throw to home plate.

Milwaukee had lost its lead in the ninth but came back to record just the second playoff series win in franchise history and first since 1982.

 

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