ST. LOUIS — At the same house and in the same room where two years ago he told his wife he was ready to give up baseball, Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter got the call that confirmed why she refused to let him.

His newborn daughter was hungry, his toddler son was yelling along Thursday afternoon, and that's when Carpenter learned he'd made history two seasons after being ready to send his career into it.

His comeback now included the Cy Young Award.

Only the second Cardinal in the club's history to receive pitching's highest prize, Carpenter won the second-closest National League vote of the past 18 conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Carpenter received 19 first-place votes and was first or second on 31 of the 32 ballots. The vote gave him 132 points, surpassing Florida lefty Dontrelle Willis' 112.

Carpenter's son, Sam, did a little dance to celebrate.

Alyson Carpenter, who talked her husband back into baseball, hugged him.

"It's one of those memories that will always stick in my head—we sat here until about 3 in the morning crying and talking about my career," Carpenter said from his home in New Hampshire, describing what happened there late one night in July 2003. "I was ready to be done. She didn't think I was done. And that I would regret it if I didn't take that one more step and try to come back.

"I know that if it wasn't for her I wouldn't be here."

Willis had more wins than any other pitcher in baseball (22). Houston's Roger Clemens, who finished third in the voting, had a lower ERA than any other pitcher in baseball (1.87). Other pitchers had more strikeouts and more innings pitched than Carpenter. But no other pitcher had as consistently dominant a run as Carpenter authored in the heart of this past season.

No other pitcher this year.

No other pitcher this era.

Carpenter is the only pitcher in the 86 seasons of the live-ball era to go undefeated over 16 consecutive starts while pitching at least seven innings in each start and never allowing more than three earned runs. The Cardinals won 17 consecutive games Carpenter started from June 14 to a win on Sept. 13. That was the core of the run in which Carpenter had 22 consecutive quality starts, the longest streak in the league since Bob Gibson's 22 in 1968.

Gibson was the last Cardinal to win the Cy Young, doing so in 1970, and the only other Cardinal to win the Cy Young, having also won in 1968.

Carpenter "had from the first day of spring training that feel that he could energize our rotation," manager Tony La Russa said. "Right from the beginning, he was setting the tone for our rotation and for our ballclub. He just kept elevating his performance."

A year ago, Carpenter went 15-5 and won the comeback player of the year award from his peers. But he missed the postseason with a biceps injury. General manager Walt Jocketty said Thursday he recalled pitching coach Dave Duncan remarking in this past spring training that Carpenter's focus hinted at luminous possibilities.

Around Jupiter, Fla., there were whispers of the righty being Cy Young-caliber.

This was less than 19 months after he was ready to quit.

In 1999, Carpenter was the young turk on a Toronto pitching staff that featured two Cy Young winners (Clemens and Pat Hentgen) and two future Cy Young winners (he and Roy Halladay). His future was bright; people told him so. In 2002, he was named the Blue Jays' opening day starter. Four days later, he made the first of three visits to the disabled list that season.

By the end of it, he had shoulder surgery and was a free agent. He signed with the Cardinals, made a total of eight minor league appearances in 2003 and still felt pain in his pitching arm. He returned home in July, after he "couldn't even play catch" following a Class AA start.

"I was (tired) of going to work hurting every day," Carpenter said. "I was not thinking 100 percent clearly about what I wanted to do. I was to the point where I didn't want to do it anymore. I'll go get a regular job, whatever it is I didn't know.

"I was ready to go. Fortunately, (Alyson) wasn't."

A second surgery to his shoulder, this one by Cardinals team doctors, mended the pain and Carpenter embarked on his comeback year the next spring. There was much more to his return than health, however. Carpenter said earlier this season that he "gave a lot of games away in Toronto because I wasn't 100 percent prepared. There were definitely games that mentally I wasn't there like I needed to be."

The lessons learned from Clemens and Hentgen took root during his recovery, and he plunged into Duncan's philosophy of pitching, becoming buzzsaw focused, giving no game, no inning away.

On June 14 of this summer, at Toronto, he came full circle.

The 2005 season was the first since 2000 without a no-hitter, so Carpenter's one-hit shutout of his former club could arguably be the best-pitched game of the year. He needed 95 pitches to get through it, struck out 10 and faced only 28 batters, one more than the minimum.

That game sparked the unmatched run of 16 unbeaten starts, in which Carpenter was 13-0 with a 1.36 ERA. He struck out more batters (115) over those 132P innings than he allowed to reach base (79 hits, 19 walks).

"It was one of those things where you try to anticipate a potential problem," La Russa said. "He was on such a consistent roll already—really, really going at a high level, that you didn't want (Toronto) to be a distraction. He was at 100 percent, and more motivation might tip him over, become a detriment. Then he pitched like that.

"That's when you knew it—you were watching something special."

Carpenter said there are four things a pitcher learns he wants to do in the majors once he arrives: Start opening day, pitch in the All-Star Game, win a Cy Young and win a World Series. He started opening day for the Cardinals, started the All-Star Game for the NL and Thursday's call gave him three of four.

In his first completely healthy season since 2001, he was the only pitcher to rank in the top five in the majors in wins, ERA and strikeouts. He stumbled in starts after the Cardinals clinched the division title but won the first two playoff starts of his career, going 2-0 in three starts this fall.

"This whole situation is unbelievable," he said. "As hard as I worked from the time I was injured, to get back last year, and I was happy with what I did (in 2004). But I felt that there was more in there."