Starting off
ST. LOUIS — The coolest person at the World Series is C.J. Wilson.
The Texas Rangers pitcher chilled out as he prepared to face the St. Louis Cardinals in Wednesday night’s opener. He spent 2Z\x minutes in a Dallas cryotherapy chamber, where liquid nitrogen lowered the temperature to a frosty 295 degrees below zero in an effort to speed body recovery.
“So 35 degrees should be no big deal, right?” Wilson said Tuesday after examining the frigid forecast for Game 1 at Busch Stadium, where he starts against the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter.
Wearing a dark ski cap, dress shirt and vest in the interview room, Wilson said he read about the Dallas Mavericks trying out cryotherapy last season, when they won the NBA championship, and had Rangers head athletic trainer Jamie Reed check out the relatively new treatment with Casey Smith, his Mavs’ counterpart.
After going 16-7 with a 2.94 ERA during the regular season, the free agent-to-be is just 0-2 with an 8.04 ERA in three postseason starts.
Carpenter was 11-9 during the regular season but was 10-2 with a 2.73 ERA from late June on, and the Cardinals rewarded him in September with a $21 million, two-year contract. He was brilliant in Game 5 of the division series, pitching a three-hitter that beat Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay 1-0, then struggled in the third game of the NL championship series against Milwaukee but still won 4-3 with a five-inning outing.
