ST. LOUIS -- Lance Berkman knew he couldn't run from the cameras. So the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder looked straight into the first one that zoomed in on his face and offered a mea culpa to the entire state of Texas.

"I'm not afraid to say, 'Hey, I wasn't right,'" Berkman said.

One of the subplots to Game 1 of the World Series, which starts Wednesday night in St. Louis, is that Berkman never thought the Texas Rangers would be playing in it. That's why he chose to sign a one-year deal with the Cardinals in the offseason, even though the Rangers also pursued him.

Berkman told a Houston radio station in January that the Rangers were an "average team" without star pitcher Cliff Lee, and that they caught "lightning in a bottle and they got hot" when they made last year's World Series. He even denounced the rest of Texas' pitching staff, which performed "better than their talent level and, consequently, they had a great year."

The Cardinals, Berkman figured, had the pieces to make a deep postseason run.

Turns out the Rangers did, too.

"Certainly the last thing I want is to have the entire state of Texas to be mad at me," Berkman said before a workout Tuesday at Busch Stadium. "I don't want to disrespect any players the Rangers have, because they have a fine baseball team. I think if you say enough things publicly, eventually you're going to say some things that are probably not great, and that's the case here."