It's All About Momentum

Thanks to Jason for the picture....

I’ve been planning to do a site like this for a while. A place for Cards fans to enjoy their baseball.

But I’ll formally introduce the site later.

I can’t think about anything but Albert right now. I’m useless, numb, a shell of my usual self. I’m like a 10-year-old on Christmas Eve who forgot his Ritalin.

What a moment. Where are the words?

Going into Game 5, this didn’t look like a 3-1 series. My buddy Jon, who lives in Boston and therefore must be destroyed, kept asking me why the Cards weren’t “showing up.” Why were they imploding, laying and egg, choking? Truth is, we weren’t choking, we just weren’t getting any breaks.

In game 3, the Cards chased Clemens after 6 innings. The game was tied only because of Mike Lamb’s “first row of the Crawford Boxes” homer. Taguchi hits a similar ball to right field that chases Lane to the wall….oh if So were only lefthanded, and that ball headed for the boxes…Morris unable to make a two-strike pitch to anyone in the bottom of the sixth. You know the rest; the unearned run after Nunez is hurt; the battle against Lidge only to fall short by one run.
In game 4, Backe gets a floating zone, and Lane hits another homer to the FROTCB. I swear he broke his bat. A couple of ejections, a couple more bad calls. Astros win 2-1.

So close in two games, yet all anyone can talk about is a choke.

Going to game 5, you could feel the momentum. I told a coworker that, if the game was close in the sixth, the Astros would start channeling the Matrix. You know the scene…with Smith on the subway tracks with Neo.

“You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

I swear momentum has a life of its own. It feels like a train is heading toward you. In the seventh inning of game 5, you could feel the momentum, despite the Cards lead. You could feel it in Luna’s error. You could feel it in Burke’s slow rolling single. You had to know what was coming. Berkman’s shot couldn’t land anywhere but the FROTCB. At this point, I’m ready to steal the wrecking ball poised at Busch to head to the juice box for some therapeutic, Brother-Bluto-on-D-Day’s-guitar-style vandalism.

In truth, there are probably a lot of Astro fans that wouldn’t mind changing the juice box. A hill? In play? With a flag-pole? Really? It’s history, says the owner. It’s an homage to the great ballparks of the past. Yeah. It leaves me with the same feeling I had the first time I held a Babe Ruth baseball card in my hands. The card was made in 1986 as part of a remake, or, if you prefer, homage. Within two weeks, it was making a motorcycle sound on my bicycle. Someone should stick Minute Maid in the spokes.

The rest of the game was painful. Fox did the obligatory 45 seconds commemorating Busch, stuck between pictures of the Colt 45’s and the Astrodome. Why, I’m wondering, why can’t they have kept the name Colt 45’s. I mean really, doesn’t baseball need one team named after a Malt Liquor? I’m sure Billy Dee could use the promo work.

The camera shots around the stadium. Nolan Ryan, George H.W. Bush. The comments from the announcers, “Everything is big in Texas.” Including, apparently, my nausea.

“That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of your doom.”

Then, Eckstein comes up. Is there a Cardinal over the last ten years you’d rather see, down by two, with the bases empty and two outs? When you just need a baserunner. When you just need someone to put the ball in play, and make the Astros earn their out. I can’t think of one. Seems like Doug Mientkiewicz still has the ball from the last time our shortstop was up in this situation.
What an at-bat. Lidge throws two 97 MPH fastballs to get ahead 1-2, then comes in with a low, biting slider. In the replay, you can see Eckstein slowing his bat down to catch the ball. Just put it in play. Oh, yeah, and put it in the two square inch spot where neither Ensberg nor Everett can get it.

Now it’s Edmonds, and it looks like Lidge is starting to unravel. From the moment Eckstein’s grounder squeaked through, Lidge threw one more pitch in the strikezone. He got Edmonds to chase a 1-0 pitch in the dirt, then walked him on three overthrown fastballs.

It’s 10:45 on a work-night. My wife is a basket-case and can’t watch. But it’s Lidge v. Pujols for a chance to go to the World Series. I was seriously considering waking my 2-year-old up to watch. Oh, he’d never remember, but who cares.

This doesn’t compare to any other situation in Cardinal baseball in my lifetime.

Pujols chases the slider in the dirt for strike one. Then, Captain Obvious Steve Lyons comments that Lidge might actually throw all sliders to Albert. I think, “that’s so obvious, maybe Pujols is sitting slider.” He was.

“My name is NEO.”

It’s the little things about a HR like that. The way Pujols watches it. The way Lidge stays in a crouched position. The way Pettitte mouths, “Oh My God.” The look on Pettitte’s face was part disbelief, and part respect. How does a baseball travel that far? The giant sucking sound in the park. The disbelief on the faces of the fans.

Stick that one in the FROTCB’s. The park said the ball traveled 412 feet. Right. What do they have down there? The metric system? Did they mean meters? Kilometers?

How do you put this in perspective? Lidge has been our Mariano Rivera. He’s been unhittable against us. But this wasn’t like last year’s Red Sox comeback. This wasn’t a bloop single, stolen base, then another bloop single.

This was more like Mariano Rivera against Ted Williams.

This was a tape measure blast off the best closer in the National League to avoid elimination. This will be saved in my TiVo for the duration of winter. I’ll watch it when I don’t feel like pulling out Bull Durham.

You put it into perspective, ‘cause I can’t. Busch Stadium lives, and I wouldn’t want to be the Astros in the late innings of a close game 6. Momentum is a funny thing. You can feel it.