Just don't get used to it.

Respect is hard to come by in baseball around playoff time. The last time anybody can remember two teams shaking hands at the end of a playoff series was 1991, after the closest World Series ever, and you definitely won't see the Yankees-Red Sox series end that way. Then again, few teams merit respect the way the Cardinals do.

Their opening-day payroll of $75.6 million ranked 11th out of 30 major-league teams, but nobody got more professionalism for the buck. The Cards' lineup is loaded with patient, lethal hitters, their pitchers contest every inch of the plate, and they send out a Gold Glover at just about every position. The guy who calls the shots, Tony La Russa, is a lawyer by training.

So maybe it wasn't a coincidence that Dodgers manager Jim Tracy described the rare handshake exchange Sunday night as, "a professional show of class between two very classy organizations."

It would have said just as much if the Dodgers carried a white flag out onto the field. That's how soundly the Cardinals handled Los Angeles. Their only hiccup came in Game 4, when Los Angeles starter Jose Lima threw a complete-game shutout by nibbling at the corners, and the St. Louis hitters uncharacteristically obliged by biting at too many bad pitches.

That trend ended early in the clinching game. Albert Pujols, who had only one RBI in the series to that point, climbed out of an 0-2 hole against Odalis Perez and drew a walk in the first inning. Then Scott Rolen, hitless in the division series, wrangled another walk.

Their patience wasn't rewarded immediately, but all the walks eventually wore down Perez. Then, in the fourth, Pujols maneuvered reliever Wilson Alvarez into a 3-1 count and smacked the next pitch into the left-field seats for a three-run homer that sealed the Dodgers' fate.

On paper, the Yankees and Red Sox look a little better - and much flashier - but not necessarily smarter. They spent more at the start of the season - Boston by $50 million and New York by more than $100 million. They keep slush funds for midseason reinforcements and still have enough to bury their mistakes. That lavish lifestyle won't fly in St. Louis.

General manager Walt Jocketty makes up some of the deficit simply by being shrewd. In his first season, he fired Joe Torre, but replaced him with La Russa, the only guy who might be his equal. Two years later, he stole Mark McGwire from Oakland.

Jocketty needed only one look at Pujols in the Triple-A playoffs in 2000 to know that the youngster who had spent most of the season in Class A was ready for the bigs. In the four years since, Pujols has produced numbers only Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams bettered at the same stage of their careers.

St. Louis won a major league-leading 105 games and its first playoff series with little fuss. It's an old-school team, assembled the old-fashioned way, versatile and intelligent enough to play any kind of ball the situation demands. That's what the Dodgers recognized, for at least one night, by extending their hands in defeat.

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