The St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox will meet in the World Series this year for the fourth time in MLB history. Cardinals-Red Sox is the only one of seven World Series matchups that have happened four or more time to have occurred this century, having taken place in 2004 and 2013.
Cardinals vs. Red Sox World Series Game 1 will start at 5:07 p.m. PT or 8:07 p.m. ET on October 23, 2013. Wednesday's game, played at Boston's home Fenway Park in Massachusetts, is the first of seven consecutive games until October 31.
Their first match was in 1946, where Cardinals won with 4-3; second match was in 1967 with Cardinals again beating Red Sox 4-3; third match in 2004, the Red Sox shut down Cardinals with 4-0.
Both teams have won championships since, doing so consecutively in 2006 (Cardinals) and 2007 (Red Sox). With the two facing each other in 2013 World Series, they will have a combined win of five of the last 10 championships.
They have been the two best teams of the 21st century, and they enter the World Series having tied for the best regular-season records in both of their respective National League (NL) and American League (AL) in Major League Baseball. The last time this happened was when the Yankees and Braves met in 1999.
"It's about team; it's not about us individually," Cardinals' manager said of his next opponent, according to MLB.com. "And grinding out at-bats and playing tough, playing hard, playing all the way through nine. Those are the things that I believe set good teams apart."
Game 1 of World Series will feature Jon Lester, Red Sox's ace, one of the four players from the last World Series team - along with Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz and Jacoby Ellsbury - and a guy who has given up just five runs through 19 1/3 innings this postseason.
"There will still be nerves, there will still be all that to be expected," Lester commented on the game today. "But I think I know how I am a little bit more as a pitcher and what to expect from myself, and what to expect from the crowd and all the different things that go along with getting a start in the World Series."
For the Cardinals, Adam Wainwright, 34, who was one of the contributing forces to the 2006 World Series Championship, will pitch as the starter.
"I don't want to make it like an ordinary game," he said the night before the World Series, according to CBS Sports. "I want this to mean even more than regular games."
"What I've found throughout my playoff career so far is that I respond really well when the adrenaline really kicks in. I love that," Wainwright continued, the CBS Sports reported. "The crowd gets louder. I get more fired up.
"I can't tell you how cool it is to pitch in front of great crowds like we're going to have tomorrow here in Boston, and like we're going to have in St. Louis with that crisp, cool air, that Octobery kind of air, where you know it's playoff baseball."
"This is my favorite time of year, for many reasons," he said. "There's NFL football on TV, there's college football on TV, there's hunting season, there's playoff baseball.
"It does not get much better than that."
