Yes. The hard part is to keep playing hard and doing all the little things that go toward winning when things are not going well. The 2011 Cardinals were having a very disappointing year until the last five weeks of the season. They weren't catching any breaks and were getting far enough behind that it would have been easy to pack it in. But they kept battling and the breaks started going their way. They had control about the battling and playing hard part. They had no control over the breaks. But the team has to take care of the things it can control. And those things are the preparation, the effort, the staying focused.
Here is a little bit of history about the 2011 Cardinals (before their comeback):
At the beginning of the month the Cardinals were 2 1⁄2 games behind the Brewers in the standings. However, they lost two of three to Milwaukee on the road Aug. 1–3, then did the same at home on Aug. 9–11, giving the Brewers a four-game lead in the NL Central. The team continued to stumble as the Brewers continued to win. Newly acquired shortstop Furcal hit only .240 for the month. The Cardinals went 2–4 on a six-game road trip to Pittsburgh and Chicago, then came home and were swept in three games by a bad Dodger team. After close of business on August 24, the day the Dodgers completed their sweep, St. Louis had fallen ten games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central standings and 101⁄2 games behind the Atlanta Braves (and in third place) in the NL Wild Card standings. Manager Tony La Russa said on the struggles: "I guarantee that the team you have seen the past few weeks is not the team we have, and I believe you will start to see our team tomorrow." Chris Carpenter and other veterans called for a closed, player-only team meeting, which was held the day after the Dodgers series ended. St. Louis' odds of making the playoffs stood at 1.3%.
The sweep by Los Angeles dropped the Cardinals to 67–63.
