Until last week, a professional baseball team had never actually wronged me. Sure, in 2001 the Diamondbacks made me cry, and in 2004 the Red Sox made me want to sail off to a tropical island where there is no baseball. But last week, the Detroit Tigers actually wronged me.

Pipe Dream was in St. Louis for a weekend conference, and when we arrived, it was revealed that the hotel rooms we booked were unavailable because the Tigers needed the rooms after the rain out, presumably because the rain ruined Magglio Ordonez’s hair.

We were thus moved to a hotel 40 minutes outside the city, and right there I declared the Tigers my enemy. I would adopt the Cardinals as my team for the weekend, and when the Tigers lost I would be there to celebrate with the masses.

The Cardinals were my surrogate team at first, but after spending time in the city with the team’s fans, it became so much more: I genuinely wanted the Cards to win, and I felt the loyal Missourians deserved this.

You couldn’t go anywhere in St. Louis without being reminded that there was a World Series going on. Everywhere you looked people were wearing Pujols jerseys and Cardinals hats and walking around with faces painted red and white. Skyscrapers shut off the lights in certain rooms so that only “GO CARDS” could be seen on the sides of the buildings. Cardinals banners hung from every street sign, building and tree. Frankly I’m surprised that Fred Bird (The Cardinal’s mascot) was not named mayor of the city.

I began to wonder if this is the kind of display that would happen in New York if the Yankees or Mets were playing in the World Series, and the answer is no. Of course that is because New York is a much larger city, and there are two dividing loyalties. But it really is disappointing that something like that would not have happened in New York.

It’s fun for Yankee and Mets fans to hate each other, but the entire city united and rooting for one team? It’s downright inspirational.

It didn’t matter in St. Louis that this World Series drew the lowest television ratings of all time or that the Cardinals will probably go down in history as the worst World Series champions in history; all that mattered is they would go down as champions.

After the final pitch of Game 5, we were outside the stadium cheering and shouting with the other fans. Sure, we were New Yorkers, but for that night it didn’t matter. For that night we were from St. Louis. I slapped hands with and hugged hundreds of people, and I’m pretty confident that at least one of them was Nelly.

Soon we were inside the stadium chanting for the Cardinals as David Eckstein received his World Series MVP award. Around me were people of all ages: dads holding kids who couldn’t possibly grasp what they were witnessing, older folks silently staring and beaming with joy and I think I even saw a Mets fan on the verge of tears wishing it could be his team.

People will say the Cardinals didn’t deserve to win, but standing in the stadium I can tell you that the city of St. Louis did deserve to win. St. Louis is a baseball town, and right now that baseball town is deservedly the center of the baseball universe.

We filed out of the stadium and back into the street where traffic had come to a complete stop. Every car had people sitting on the roof; people ran in out of traffic — getting hit by a car wasn’t an option because bad things just couldn’t happen on that night.

Three of us wrapped up the night by running to the Gateway Arch and trying to climb it, which of course is impossible. But we didn’t care.

Standing there on the western banks of the Mississippi under the arch with the entire city partying behind me I wondered, “Is this what Lewis and Clark felt during their trip to St. Louis before they went out and explored Louisiana?”

Probably not. But then again, Lewis and Clark had never been to a World Series.