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The Cardinals' David Freese, who went 2 for 4 in Game 6, scored in the third inning when a throw from Yasiel Puig sailed past catcher A. J. Ellis.
ST. LOUIS — By the end of the National League Championship Series, late Friday night, a cold, misty drizzle had settled over Busch Stadium. Nobody seemed to mind. The scoreboard read 9-0 in favor of the home team, just as it did last fall, when the season slipped away in the San Francisco rain.
The St. Louis Cardinals lost that National League Championship Series after leading three games to one, a rare blip in a charmed 10-season stretch for the league's most decorated franchise. This time the Cardinals prevailed, thumping the Los Angeles Dodgers to clinch their fourth trip to the World Series since 2004.
They will open on the road next Wednesday against the Boston Red Sox or the Detroit Tigers, who play the sixth game of the American League Championship Series on Saturday with Boston leading, three games to two.
The Cardinals finished this series by trouncing the Dodgers' ace, Clayton Kershaw, and showing off their own pitching prodigy. Michael Wacha, drafted last June from Texas A&M, worked seven innings for the victory and was named the series' most valuable player.
Wacha, 22, beat Kershaw twice this series without allowing a run. In his first playoff start, facing elimination in Pittsburgh, he held the Pirates without a hit until the eighth inning. He is 3-0 with a 0.43 earned run average this postseason, allowing just one run and eight hits in 21 innings.
Wacha had help Friday from right fielder Carlos Beltran, 36, who went 3 for 4 and drove in two runs. Beltran, the former Met, advanced to the World Series for the first time in his 16-year career.
For Don Mattingly, the Dodgers' manager and the former Yankees star, it was another empty postseason. Mattingly has never made the World Series in any capacity across 24 major league seasons. The Dodgers hold a 2014 option on their contract with Mattingly, who struck an optimistic note before the game.
"I think these are the games you want to play," he said. "Your guys get excited. You've worked all year long for this. Kershaw and Wacha — obviously, this is a cool matchup. These are two quality guys going at it, two teams that want to move on."
He added: "I know it's serious and everybody's trying to win, but it's a time you should have fun and enjoy what we're doing."
In a broad sense, the Dodgers had a lot of fun this season, romping through the summer after a slow start, welcoming the dynamic Yasiel Puig to the team and leading the league in home and road attendance. In taking this series to six games, they advanced closer to the World Series than they had at any time since 1988, when they won it.
They wanted to become the first team since the 2004 Red Sox to win Games 6 and 7 of a postseason series on the road, and Kershaw seemed to give them a strong chance to force a finale. He had not lost consecutive starts since mid-April and is a lock to win his second Cy Young award.
But there were danger signs from the start — a double by Beltran in the first inning, two wild pitches in the second and a magnificent at-bat in the third by Matt Carpenter, the league leader in hits.
Carpenter saw 11 pitches — fastballs, sliders and curveballs — before doubling to the right-field corner with one out. Kershaw fell behind Beltran, who singled home Carpenter before Matt Holliday struck out.
But with an 0-2 count on Yadier Molina, Kershaw could not limit the damage. Molina worked the count to 2-2 and lashed a high slider up the middle for a single. Beltran scored, and for a moment Kershaw stood alone on the grass between the mound and the third-base line, hands on his hips, staring into the upper deck.
It only got worse for the Dodgers. A single by David Freese, again on a slider. Then a walk to Matt Adams on a ball that seemed to cross the bottom of the strike zone, at the knees. Kershaw barked at the plate umpire, Greg Gibson. So did Mattingly and the pitching coach, Rick Honeycutt.
The Dodgers were crumbling, and when Shane Robinson punched a fastball to right, Puig punctuated the inning with a careless throw, soaring over the catcher. The error had no consequence — the runners advanced to second and third, without scoring — but it symbolized the storyline.
The Dodgers were loose and unhinged. The Cardinals were dignified and professional.
Both are caricatures, too simplistic to mean very much, but the teams played into their stereotypes.
Kershaw needed 48 pitches to wade through the third inning, and while he retired the side in the fourth, he could not record an out in the fifth. Puig made another error that inning, misplaying Molina's leadoff single, and two more hits knocked Kershaw from the game.
Only once before, in July 2008, had Kershaw allowed at least 10 hits and five runs without getting an out in the fifth inning. That game, at Coors Field in Denver, was his ninth in the majors. He was 20 years old.
Kershaw has grown since then, leading the league in earned run average in each of the last three seasons. This year he became the first Dodger since Sandy Koufax with an E.R.A. under 2.00. But the innings piled up — 259, including the postseason — and Mattingly had Kershaw pitch the division series clincher on three days' rest.
Perhaps the workload finally caught up to Kershaw. Or maybe it was just the Cardinals, doing what they do so often, seizing the moment in October.
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