The lighter side of sports (special World Series edition):

Congratulations to the 2006 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals on your victory over the Tigers in the most surprising championship run since Gordon Bombay’s District 5 Mighty Ducks upset the Hawks on a penalty shot by their worst player.

The Cardinals won, despite the fact that their locker room was more dramatic than the O.C. Third baseman Scott Rolen and manager Tony LaRussa had not spoken to each other in weeks, probably because LaRussa asked Rolen’s girlfriend to help him on his Spanish homework.

Pipe Dream’s staff was forced to find new hotel accommodations in St. Louis because the Tigers were staying in their rooms. The staff got to spend one night in the hotel, but that night was ruined when someone found a black tarry substance rubbed all over the bed that Kenny Rogers had slept in.

In New York sports news, after watching awful former Yankees pitchers Jeff Weaver and Kenny Rogers square off in this year’s World Series and Jose Contreras and Javier Vasquez win it last year, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner ordered that Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright have their contracts extended 10 years to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

And finally, after the Cardinals won the series, the Mets, believing that they were the better team in the NLCS, announced that they will raise a special banner next to the ’69 and ’86 season’s banners reading: “The (Should-Have-Been) 2006 World Series Champions.”