Houston scored four big runs in a wild, exciting eighth inning Friday to overtake a Tampa Bay Devil-Rays team that had overtaken them and won 11-8 in one of the most remarkable home games of a season that thus far has been filled with remarkable home games. The victory, the Astros' fifth in a row, propels them into first place alone in the NL Central over the Chicago Cubs, who lost earlier Friday to the New York Yankees at Wrigley Field, but the meaning of the victory, in the context of the third month of play, almost takes a secondary place to an account of the way in which the game was played. Tonight's column headline refers not just to the Astros' accomplishment, but also to the Devil-Rays'. Both teams did a splendid job in recovering from disasters that befell them. Of course, it's easy to write that now, in the relative calm of a late Friday evening and Saturday morning, but as the game unfolded, it looked like Houston was going to fall victim to the comeback of the year by Tampa Bay.

The Astros broke out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning. Nick Bierbrodt, the ex-Diamondbacks' pitcher (I believe I mistakenly referred to him last night as an ex-Brewer), had a terrible game. His problem was easy enough to spot; he wasn't finishing his pitches, and his left side was flying open as he threw, leaving everything up in the zone. But correcting that problem proved impossible. As he fell behind every hitter, Bierbrodt walked Craig Biggio and surrendered a home run to Morgan Ensberg on a 2-2 pitch. The homer extends an extraordinarily-productive streak for Ensberg who now, in a platoon role has nearly as many home runs (10) as Jeff Bagwell does (11) and more RBI (31) than Houston's 1B does (25). It's a hot streak, all right, but it's one that has revealed the development of the player the Astros thought they might have had last season. Even in 2002, Ensberg had a good eye at the plate; he doesn't chase pitches he can't handle, and when he does get a pitch to hit, right now, he's killing it. The law of baseball averages says Ensberg will cool off eventually, but since his principal trait at the plate is patience, he might have a chance to stay out of a long slump. If and when that slump comes, perhaps by then Bagwell will be able to pick up for him. Although Bagwell has not been productive with homers or RBI for quite a long time now, he's still doing a few things at the plate to contribute. Here, after Ensberg's homer, he resisted temptation as Bierbrodt fought back to establish a full count and doubled to LF. Jeff Kent went down and got a slider, sending it in to CF and moving Bagwell to 3B. Lance Berkman thus had an opportunity batting right-handed to break the game open. Alas, he did not; but his 4-6 fielder's choice grounder did bring home a third run, as a hard slide by Kent into 2B took away any thoughts of a double play. Tonight's starting RF, Brian Hunter, once again batting sixth, walked on four pitches, as Bierbrodt just had no command at all. Gregg Zaun, the regular catcher for Jeriome Robertson, flew out to the deep, shadowy recess of LCF for out number two, but Adam Everett saw to it that the additional scoring opportunity represented by runners on 1B and 2B wasn't wasted. He drilled a Bierbrodt mistake into the Crawford Boxes for a three-run homer and a 6-0 lead. Bierbrodt eventually ended the inning by getting Robertson to ground to 1B, but the respite of a half-inning in the dugout didn't help him, and Lou Pinella, having extended his bullpen in the Cubs' series just concluded, had little choice but to send him back out there for the second. The command of his pitches simply wasn't there. He walked the bases loaded from the top of Houston's order and by then, Pinella had seen enough. Carlos Reyes, whom we all thought was going to start game two of the series on Saturday night, came in to relieve Bierbrodt and coaxed Jeff Kent to hit into a 5-2 forceout at home for one out, but a Berkman sacrifice fly to CF, after which Bagwell was caught trying to advance to 3B, gave Houston what appeared to be an insurmountable 7-0 lead.

Robertson, however, after holding Tampa Bay to just one hit over the first three innings and getting two outs in the fourth, collapsed psychologically. That second out of the fourth might serve as a fitting image for what most of the game slowly became for the Astros. Rocco Baldelli popped a pitch foul to the stands, halfway between home plate and first base. Bagwell and Zaun didn't communicate well, and Zaun had to drop to his knees while Bagwell snagged the ball right above the catcher's head. The out was made, but it would not be the only time in the game the Astros didn't communicate well or field well. RF Aubrey Huff and C Toby Hall singled to LCF and RCF, then Travis Lee, whom the Astros have seen before as a Diamonback and a Phillie, launched one toward the lower-deck seats in RF. Brian Hunter made a great effort to catch the ball, nearly leaping into the seats, but the hit fell just beyond his reach and into the arms of the fans. The Devil-Rays had a three-run homer, and their deficit had been reduced to four runs. It's hard to describe exactly what happened to Robertson in the fourth. My immediate, impressionistic criticism (perhaps not always accurate or to everyone's liking) is that Robertson relaxed. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that the entire Astros' team did after they had built the lead, but search as I might for a concrete cause for Robertson's collapse in particular, I cannot find one. He did not have the obvious mechanical flaws of Bierbrodt, but as he tried to regain the edge he had in the first three innings after Lee's homer in the fourth, he seemed only to get more anxious. The harder he tried to throw the strikes that came easily to him in the first couple of innings, the worse matters became. A base hit and an error on Bagwell put Jared Sandberg at 2B, and Robertson walked Carl Crawford on a full count--a great at-bat for the Houston-area product. Reyes did what any self-respecting non-hitter would do in this spot: he just stood there as Robertson fell behind him 3-0. Houston's lefty worked the count back full, but his control was now so far off that the walk he gave up didn't surprise that many people. What was surprising was that Jimy Williams went out and pulled Robertson right then and there, summoning Ricky Stone to face Julio Lugo. Stone ran the count to 2-2 before he got Lugo to chase a slider out of the zone for an inning-ending strikeout. The three runs that Tampa Bay put up were startling and they deprived Robertson of a possible win, but if there were plenty of innings remaining for the Devil-Rays to climb all the way back into the game, there were also plenty of innings for the Astros to keep the offense churning.

Yet, the one thing nobody counted on Friday was the resilency of Tampa Bay's bullpen. Reyes and Jesus Colome combined to throttle the Houston attack from the end of the second through the seventh. In part, as I said, I believe the Astros relaxed, figuring that seven runs were going to be enough; but another part was the pitching of these two men. Reyes gave up a couple of hits in the fifth, and Colome was uncomfortably wild for the Astros' hitters to face, but each man made the pitches he had to make at the right time. While Tampa Bay was shutting out the Astros, Houston was doing anything but that against the D-Rays. Tampa pecked away and pecked away. Marlon Anderson led off the fifth with a homer to RF and Rocco Baldelli singled to LF, putting Stone in major trouble again. Yet the Astros' interior defense, which has been an integral part of the club's rise since the doldrums of April, stepped up again. Aubrey Huff's burner up the middle was sucked up by Everett, who flipped backhandedly to Kent. Kent caught that backhanded toss barehanded, pivoted and steamed a throw over to Bagwell for a key 6-4-3 double play. It's often said that the insertion of a player into a team's starting lineup is the reason why that team starts playing well; oftentimes that claim is made without evidence; but there can be no doubt that Adam Everett's entrance into the Astros' starting lineup has had a measurable impact on Houston over the last thirty games. It's not just that Houston now leads the NL in double plays. More than that, it is that nothing gets through the left side of the infield that shouldn't get through. Everett gets to everything, and he gets to it in such a fundamentally-sound fashion--body positioning and glove work both being first-rate on his part--that unless we look close, we may miss the fact that not only is Everett making the routine 6-3 play at SS, he's also made a high number of difficult double plays and putouts from the hole with remarkably little fuss. He ended the fifth on one of those routine 6-3 grounders.

But Stone didn't have it Friday. Tampa Bay reached him again in the sixth. Lee singled to CF and Jared Sandberg hit an impressive homer high off the brick facade near the Conoco pump in LCF to cut the Astros' lead to 7-6. Left-hander Nate Bland was then summoned and he, it must be said, did well, retiring the next three, including a strikeout for the second out of the inning, but with the lead now only one, it felt as if the Astros simply weren't going to make it to Dotel and Wagner and the possible save they represented. Brad Lidge had a frustrating, even maddening seventh inning. After one out, he fanned Baldelli, but a wild pitch on the strikeout--a pitch that perhaps Brad Ausmus could have blocked, perhaps not--allowed Baldelli to reach, and he stole 2B. Aubrey Huff's grounder to 1B moved Baldelli to 3B, and Lee popped up along the 3B line, for what appeared to be a clutch third out for Lidge. But for the second time tonight, the Astros didn't talk to each other very well. Ensberg staggered under the ball and Zaun came lumbering over in that direction, too. The ball, called fair, clanked off Zaun's glove, rolled far away from fair territory into foul, and the beautiful, insurmountable seven-run Astros' lead was gone. I considered jumping off my balcony at this point, but consoled myself merely with an anguished scream and the hope that Dotel and Wagner could keep the game tied until Tampa Bay trotted out a reliever the Astros could hit.

Almost all of my hopes, however, on Friday were dashed. Not even Dotel could set down the Devil-Rays. When Julio Lugo blooped a double to shallow RF in front of Orlando Merced--a ball that quite possibly the man Merced replaced, Brian Hunter, could have caught for the inning's final out, and Marlon Anderson followed that stroke of luck with another, a well-placed double to the corner in RF for an RBI, I began to think that the Devil-Rays were just flat-out meant to win this one. It seemed like none of Williams's moves, either on the hill or in the field, were going to pay off. But there were still two innings to go; and with 48 runs scored in the eighth inning alone this season and eighty-odd runs total when the ninth inning is included, this was no time to give up the ship. The reason Merced was put in the game was so that he could hit in the eighth against Travis Harper. Hit he did, singling to LF. Biggio did a less-than-beautiful job trying to sacrifice and popped to 1B, but Ensberg stroked a pitch solidly the other way to RF and Houston was in business. Bagwell drew a full-count walk, the eighth the Astros received in the game and, with the bases loaded, the Money Man paid off again. Kent, down in the count 0-2 after a questionable strike from home plate ump Matt Hollowell, rolled one hard through the hole between SS and 3B and under some lunging gloves for a two-run single to give the Astros the lead back, 9-8. The second of those two runs was the cause of controversy. Tampa thought that they had nailed Ensberg at the plate, but Ensberg slid right through the legs of Toby Hall. The safe call was too much for Pinella, who erupted after making a pitching change, and went cap bill to cap bill against Hollowell. It was great fun to watch Pinella spew venom at the umpire and obliterate home plate with several frustrated kicks of dirt, but I must say that even after all the balls and strikes that Hollowell missed Friday night (and there were quite a few of those), he got the call right on the pop-up to Zaun and he got the call right on Ensberg, too. Lefty Mike Venafro, formerly with the Texas Rangers, entered the game to turn Berkman around and get him out, but he wild-pitched a run in from third and moved another runner to 2B. Geoff Blum, as pinch-hitter, made Venafro pay twice for his wildness by rapping an RBI single to CF for the last run of the inning and an 11-8 lead.

Given the way the night had gone, you might expect me to say that even now, the three-run lead didn't feel safe, but it did. When he's given some working room, Billy Wagner is as good as there is, and Tampa Bay had no chance against him in the ninth. Wagner struck out two and earned his seventeenth save of the season, drawing ever closer to Dave Smith's club record in that department and protecting the fortunate win for Dotel (5-1). It wasn't an artistic victory, by any means, but the important thing was that the Astros recovered from the disaster of blowing the lead and won a game that they dared not let slip away. I'll also pay Tampa Bay the compliment of hustling and never giving up as they mounted their lengthy comeback, but at the same time, I'd gladly let them take the moral victory over the tangible one the Astros picked up.We know that Jonathan Johnson will start Saturday in game two for Houston; we do not know who Tampa Bay's starting pitcher will be. Richard Hidalgo is due back off the DL Saturday, a piece of long-awaited good news for the ballclub, although whether he'll start and how well he'll be able to play are questions that must be answered. Another bit of good news is that Tim Redding has been ok'ed to start Sunday's series finale. With a little luck, the Astros might be going for another sweep by then. We'll see.

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