World Series: St. Louis Cardinals Get All Mixed Up

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa pulls relief pitcher Marc Rzepczynski after he gave up a two RBI double to Texas Rangers' Mike Napoli in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the World Series

Mike Segar / Reuters

(ARLINGTON, Texas) – Hey, St. Louis, if your team loses the World Series this year, blame a bad phone connection.

World Series goats are usually human. Back in 1985, for example, umpire Don Denkinger blew a call at first base that allowed the Kansas City Royals to stay alive against the Cardinals in Game 6; the Royals won it all in seven. The following year, Bill Buckner let a ball slip through his legs against the New York Mets, and Boston Red Sox fans cursed him for years (though all would eventually be forgiven).

But we may soon be adding fuzzy fiber optics to this infamous list. (Insert joke about your least favorite phone company here: Does Rangers Ballpark use AT&T?)

On Monday Night, the St. Louis Cardinals lost to the Texas Rangers, 4-2, in Game 5 of the World Series. The Rangers now have a 3-2 lead in the Series; with a win Wednesday night in St. Louis, Texas will clinch its first title. More than the actual phone, a bullpen coach hard of hearing, or Texas crowd noise that drowned a call from St. Louis manager Tony La Russa to the pen, might have played key roles in a miscommunication that directly impacted the outcome of Game 5. Or maybe La Russa, who also made a separate ninth inning decision that cost the Cardinals, needs to speak more clearly into the receiver.

No matter who – or what – should bear the blame for the mishap, it was absurd. And going into Game 6, a game St. Louis must win, the Cardinals are all mixed-up. And what makes what you're about to read doubly confusing is that, until now, La Russa's expert use and reliance on the bullpen is the reason the Cards have excelled in this post season.

The whole thing sounds like a follow up to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine. In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the score tied 2-2, La Russa called the bullpen to request that both left-handed reliever Marc Rzepczynski, and righty Jason Motte, warm up. St. Louis bullpen coach Derek Lilliquist heard La Russa ask for Rzepczynski, but not Motte.

After noticing that Motte wasn't throwing, La Russa called the bullpen back a second time, repeating his request that Motte get loose. However, by the time Texas catcher Mike Napoli, a right-hander whom La Russa wanted Motte to face, came up to the plate with the bases loaded, La Russa figured Motte wasn't ready. So La Russa kept lefty Rzepczynski, who had entered the game earlier, on the mound, mucking up La Russa's righty-righty strategy. Sure enough, Napoli hit a bases-loaded double off Rzepczynski that scored the deciding runs. It's turning into quite the Fall Classic for Nap0li as he becomes only the second player to have four multi-RBI games in a single World Series, joining a certain Mickey Mantle of the 1960 New York Yankees.

(MORE: Why The Rangers Should Beat The Cardinals)

But from the sublime to the ridiculous as things then got comical. After Rzepczynski struck out Mitch Moreland for the second out, La Russa went to the mound again, thinking Motte was finally ready. He signaled for Motte, but the pitcher who arrived from the bullpen looked strangely like Lance Lynn, another Cardinals reliever. Lynn wasn't even supposed to pitch on Monday.  “I saw the big fella come in, and I said, 'Why are you here?'" Turns out that when La Russa asked Lilliquist to warm up Motte for a second time, Lilliquist heard La Russa say “Lynn” instead of “Motte,” even though the names don't really sound alike.

La Russa ordered Lynn to intentionally walk Texas' Ian Kinsler, affording Motte some time to finally warm up. When La Russa removed Lynn for Motte after Lynn walked Kinsler, America thought La Russa was losing his mind. Why, especially in a close game, bring in a pitcher to just intentionally walk one batter, completely wasting him for the rest of the game?

Only afterwards did we discover that conversations between La Russa and Lilliquist, talking like two first graders in a broken game of telephone, produced St. Louis' bizarre bullpen strategy. “It must be loud,” La Russa says of the crowd noise in the bullpen. “I give the fans credit . . . Maybe we need to come up with some ear mikes or something.” How about texting? La Russa offered another potential solution. “Smoke signals from the dugout,” he says.

In the visiting locker room, NewsFeed asked Lynn if the bullpen was unusually loud. “I didn't hear anything,” Lynn said.  Wait, La Russa just said that the crowd noise caused the miscommunication. And now you're saying you “didn't hear anything,” that it was quiet? Lynn stares back blankly. Remind us: Who's on first?

“The bullpen phone is kind of tucked back in there,” Lynn says.  “Everything is kind of huddled over. It's hard to know. It's hard to hear. We can't even hear the phone ring out there. It's not very loud or anything like that.”

Wait, now you're saying it's hard to hear, but it's not very loud.  “Phone wise,” Lynn replies. Ah, the phone isn't very loud. Got it, I think. Now I want to bash my head against your locker. The Cardinals are very confusing.

The second mishap actually didn't hurt the Cardinals, since Motte – remember him? – wound up striking out the Texas shortstop Elvis Andrus for the third out, keeping the score at 4-2. Still, no Cards fan can be comfy with this circus.

Plus, in the top of the ninth, La Russa really cost the Cardinals; here, he only had himself to blame. Texas reliever Neftali Feliz hit Allen Craig with a pitch to start the inning. With Albert Pujols at the plate, La Russa ordered Craig to steal on a 3-2 pitch, even though the upside of that move – Craig scoring on a Pujols extra-base hit – is meaningless, since it's Pujols who represents the tying run.

Sure, Craig's jump-start could have prevented a double play. But given the nastiness of Feliz's pitches, a Pujols strikeout was a real risk. Pujols whiffed, Napoli threw Craig out by eight feet, and Cardinals fans clutched their hair. The double play destroyed the rally: two batters later, Texas won it.

(PHOTOS: The Golden Age of Baseball)

As if this game wasn't muddled enough for St. Louis, yet another goof hurt the Cardinals. In the top of the 7th, with one out and the game still tied, Craig also tried to steal second with Pujols at the plate. This move made even less sense. Even if Craig stole the base, he'd just be taking the bat out of Pujols' hands; the Rangers would have walked Pujols intentionally.

Instead, Napoli nailed Craig at second, and just like in the ninth inning, the play wasn't even close. Did La Russa order Craig to steal? “It was just a mix-up,” La Russa says. Mix-ups, like summer heat, are a St. Louis specialty. He wouldn't elaborate on this one. “On our team, nobody gets thrown under the bus,” says La Russa. (Except, apparently, for the bullpen coach who botched the phone call).

Craig said it was supposed to be a hit-and-run play. “I got the sign, and I ran,” says Craig. “Simple as that.” Yet, Pujols didn't swing at the pitch. Did he miss the sign? Did third-base coach Jose Oquendo misread La Russa's intentions? Did five people give different sets of directions? Did a game of rock-paper-scissors determine that decision?

With the Cardinals, all absurdity is possible. And if St. Louis doesn't cut the confusion, the Rangers will be riding back to Texas with a title.

LIST: Memorable Moments in the World Series

Sean Gregory is a staff writer at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @seanmgregory. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Gilad Shalit Release: Israeli Joy Mixed over Prisoner Swap

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit salutes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he disembarks from an army helicopter at Tel Nof air base in Israel on Oct. 18, 2011

Israel was happy, very happy. The news of a deal to bring home the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit arrived with the holiday of Sukkot, a traditionally cheerful weeklong harvest festival made effervescent by the news that a young man held captive by Hamas for five years was coming home to his family.

But by the time Shalit actually walked free on Tuesday, so frail he passed out on the helicopter ride home, the elation was tempered by the reality of the price Israelis had paid to set him free. The 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for the lone Israeli corporal turned out to include men and women convicted of some of the worst terrorism attacks in a country still haunted by the memory of the second intifadeh. (See pictures of the five-year ordeal of Gilad Shalit.)

"Ambivalent," says Aya Ilouz, of her feelings on the matter. Strolling in downtown Jerusalem with her husband Liron and their 5-month-old daughter Yael, the couple is so in sync on the question of the day that they finish each other's thoughts.

"Yes," says Liron, "we are very happy and excited to see Gilad meet his family. And on the other hand—"

"We are very concerned," says Aya.

"About what happens next," Liron explains. "When the next terrorist blows himself up, someone will have to answer."

Just around the corner, on King George Street, Alan Bauer had been walking home with his son on March 21, 2002, when a Palestinian man named Mohammad Hashaika detonated a suicide vest packed with metal scraps. The head of a screw pierced his son Yonatan's brain; the boy survived but was blind for three weeks and still limps. Another bit of metal went through Bauer's left forearm; he rolls up a sleeve to display the scar, an indentation in the flesh the shape and size of a D-cell battery. Eighty-four other people were wounded that day. Of the three killed, one was a woman pregnant with twins.

Though the bomber of course died, Israeli courts convicted the two women who drove him to the site of the bombing, easing his way past the Israeli checkpoint by buying flowers to carry in the Mother's Day crowd. The women watched from a safe distance — though still near enough that one entered a restaurant in clothes flecked with flesh.

"These women, as I speak, are being released," Bauer says.

The Chicago native addressed reporters in a room where the television was tuned, like most other sets in Israel, to live coverage of Shalit's return. In an abrupt shift of tone, an organizer inserted a DVD of the documentary For the Sake of Allah and the screen was filled with jailhouse interviews of Palestinian militants discussing, often casually, the mechanics of carrying out "operations." Specifics have a way of undermining the euphoria of Shalit's release. Among the 477 prisoners released on Tuesday, in the first phase of the exchange, are an organizer of the 2002 Passover bombing that killed 30 people, the deadliest attack of the second intifadeh; a woman who developed an online relationship with a lovesick Israeli youth she then had murdered when he came to meet her; and the man who proudly displayed his bloody hands to the mob gathered outside the Ramallah building where two Israeli soldiers were beaten to death after making a wrong turn on Oct. 12, 2000. (See pictures of Palestinians freed in the prisoner swap with Israel.)

When the list became public, relatives of terrorism victims appealed, without success, to Israel's supreme court to prevent the prisoner exchange. The court hearing was interrupted repeatedly by distraught survivors, including Shvuel Schijveschuurder, who lost five of his family members in a 2001 attack at a Jerusalem Sbarro. To protest the release of the woman who drove the suicide bomber to the pizza restaurant, Schijveschuurder poured paint on a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister slain by an Israeli extremist for signing the Oslo Accords.

"When we say 1,027 prisoners will be released, it's abstract, it doesn't mean anything," says Eliad Moreh Rosenberg, who was wounded in the 2002 terrorism bombing at the Hebrew University cafeteria. "But for victims of terror, it's a reality."

Prisoner swaps have happened often enough that statistics have been compiled. Israeli officials calculate that 60% of those released resume terrorism attacks. To help prevent that resumption this time around, Israel insisted that most of the prisoners liberated be sent either to the Gaza Strip — which is sealed off from Israel and under the control of Hamas, which says it continues to observe a cease-fire — or into exile in Turkey, Qatar or Syria. About 100 arrived in the West Bank, where the government led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas works diligently to suppress terrorism, coordinating with Israeli intelligence and military.

Still, in voting against the swap in the Israeli Cabinet, which overwhelmingly approved the deal, Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon noted that Palestinians freed in a 1985 exchange — which brought three captured soldiers home from Lebanon in exchange for 1,150 prisoners — would later cause the deaths of 178 Israelis. "They've essentially released a time bomb for which no one will take responsibility," says Bauer.

With the future unceratin, on Tuesday, Jewish Israelis stopped and stared at televisions wherever they came upon them. On the sidewalk at midmorning outside the 24-hour Hillel Market, 50 people were gathered under a flat screen to catch the first images of Shalit, looking painfully thin as he was marched through a high-ceilinged hall at the Egyptian border. Behind the cash register, Merav Cohen promised champagne for everyone the moment Shalit entered Israel.

"It was moving. It was very exciting," says Anat Rubin, 42. "I just saw photos of him getting out of the car. It gave me chills." But she says she heard Hamas say that, learning from success, it was keen to kidnap more Israelis in order to win freedom for the 6,000 Palestinians still in Israeli prisons. "I don't want to see the photos of them doing the V for victory," she says. "Like they won. They are really releasing murderers. I'm happy and sad all together."

— With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Jerusalem

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