We came here expecting the sound track to Game 1 of the 2011 World Series to be crashing cymbals, exploding sky rockets and the constant knee knocking of bewildered starting pitchers overwhelmed by so many big bats. Yet by the end of this brisk 49-degree evening inside the red swarm that was Busch Stadium on Wednesday night, what we got instead was a nervous, down-to-the-last-out battle where subtlety trounced the loud bang of a home-run blast.

So the opening act of this World Series -- a memorable 3-2 victory by the National League champion Cardinals over the American League kings from Texas -- will be remembered for the nuance of so many intricate moments where all the little things mattered most. Instead of allowing the Rangers to turn this into a muscular beer-league home run derby, the Cardinals made it a game better suited to their National League roots.

It's not like the Cardinals are incapable of matching Texas in a baseball power display, because as the NL's most productive offense, these Cardinals are as much an American League-style team as any the Rangers faced all year.

But despite their adaptability to Big Bang baseball, the Cardinals prefer a small-arms race. "It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out," said right fielder Lance Berkman, who drove in the game's first two runs. "But I feel like we have to win the National League-style games if we're going to win this thing. And tonight was a National League-style game. Good pitching, good defense, timely hitting. And I don't think that we want to get into a gorilla ball-type series with these guys. We'll see what happens when we add the DH and go to the American League ballpark. But when we have the National League style and we have the advantage, we have to capitalize."

From beginning to final out, it's hard to say which elements of their small-ball style loomed largest.

Was it the classic ninth-inning conflict when fireballing Cardinals closer Jason Motte out-dueled the Rangers ALCS MVP Nelson Cruz for the final out of the game by keeping him off balance with a mixture of hard heat and unexpected finesse (Cruz flied out to left for the final out when he mistimed an 87-mph Motte slider)?

Or was it the lack of a scuff mark on a baseball when Adrian Beltre pleaded with home plate umpire Jerry Layne that he had fouled a ball off his left foot rather than make the second out of the ninth?

Or was it that head-first slide in the top of the first when Cardinal starter Chris Carpenter took a toss from Albert Pujols then dove with his glove outstretched to the first-base bag, arriving there mere seconds before the stomping feet of Elvis Andrus?

Well, what made that moment so big?

Just imagine for one horrific second if Carpenter did not have the presence of mind to not only make the lunging tag, but to also instinctively tuck his pitching hand under his body a split second before Andrus' cleats came across the bag.

All night long, we kept seeing evidence of how much the personality of the game transforms once we get into the nail-biting tension of the Fall Classic. Regardless of whether you're a casual baseball lover or a die-hard hardball lunatic, the personality and pace of the game changes with seasons. In late February when the spring training rosters are bloated with veterans easing their way into shape and unproven phenoms are honing their skills on the distant practice fields, baseball feels more like a timeless vacation. Even in the marathon regular season, while the intensity on the field ratchets up for the players, in the stands, there's still a definite casual feel to the proceedings.

Yet by the time we travel this deep into autumn for the World Series, every variety of baseball lover embraces how the game's personality shifts from languid to urgent. Where once you might spend half the game drifting around the ballpark in search of a brat and a brew, then returning to your seat an inning or so later and asking the guy next to you to help update your scorecard, now the chill of these October nights tells you the urgent nature of every pitch, every at-bat, every ball that either goes airborne or skips across the infield dirt.

Now the preoccupied fan is in lockstep with the zoned-in players: everything matters. No time for drifting off for even a moment, because in the World Series everyone recognizes that it's all the little things that matter most.

So you take notice everything, wondering if you may have just witnessed the dramatic turning point.

By the end of Wednesday evening, it turned out that there were a string of baseball pearls that neatly tied together this Game 1 Cardinals victory.

So you relish the good fortune of Cardinals right fielder Berkman slapping a ball hard off the dirt just in front of the first-base line near home plate causing the ball to skip high over Rangers first baseman Michael Young in the fourth inning. That was no mighty clout, but it did drive in the Cardinals first two runs.

And when we traveled into the bottom of the sixth with the score tied at 2-2, it was another one of those small things that gave St. Louis the game-winning run. Pinch hitter Allen Craig, a World Series neophyte, comes off the bench in a cold-weather game and takes a two-out, two-strike pitch down the right field line for the game-winning RBI.

Again, this was not a fence-basher. It was classic NL small ball, getting the barrel of the bat on the ball with just enough juice. As the ball started curving toward the line, you could feel Busch Stadium inhale. Then as it kept curving and Cruz tried desperately to hustle over to haul it in, the ball dropped to the ground under the sliding Cruz's glove and David Freese trotted across the plate.

How many times over the last 45 or 50 nights have we seen these improbable Cardinals come up with these slim-margin-of-victory moments? How many more times do they need to keep producing these moments before people will finally figure out that they are not a bunch of scrappy underdogs, but cold-blooded winners who know how to snatch victory whenever these opportunities present themselves?

"When you get in the postseason you have to win games in so many ways," Freese said. "When you win 90 or 95 games, that means you're a very good team, and very good teams know how to win in a variety of ways. No two games are going to be the same."