St. Louis

There has never been an easy narrative about the Texas Rangers. For most of the last half-century, the franchise has played its games and anonymously slipped off the stage, never coming close enough to glory to be romanticized.

When Neftali Feliz took the mound at Busch Stadium on Thursday night, with a two-run lead in Game 6 of the World Series, that was destined to change. Either the Rangers would win their first championship and establish an identity as winners, or they would join the ranks of the tortured, with a failure that could haunt for decades.

They did not win, and yet they did not merely lose. The Rangers invented a new form of agony. They blew five leads in Game 6, a World Series record. In two innings, Texas came one strike away from a title and lost the lead. It happened in the ninth inning and again in the 10th.

The St. Louis Cardinals took the crown Friday with a 6-2 victory in Game 7. But they truly wrenched the crown from the Rangers’ grip the night before, with a 10-9 thriller in 11 innings that will sear the memory of everyone who cares about the team.