Wade Miller (11-11), Brad Lidge, and Dan Miceli stopped Los Angeles on just seven hits Wednesday night while the Astros made the most out of that same number of hits in registering a 6-1 victory over the Dodgers in Houston, the team's second straight over LA and third straight since Sunday. Jeff Bagwell smashed his thirtieth homer of the season to provide half the offense and, in so doing, became the 13th player in MLB history to have hit 30 or more homers in eight consecutive seasons. The win, accomplished in large measure because of a four-run, four-hit first inning off Hideo Nomo, allowed the Astros (70-62) to maintain a one-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals and to pick up a game on the Cubs after the Cubs and Cardinals have spent the last two nights knocking each other off.

Miller survived a two-hit top of the first inning thanks to a brilliant stop and throw across his body from Adam Everett on Adrian Beltre, then watched his teammates pick up where they left off Tuesday night against Dodger pitching. Craig Biggio reached on an error against 1B Robin Ventura, after which Geoff Blum singled to RF. That brought up Bagwell against a Nomo who was, in my estimation, pretty clearly not quite comfortable yet on the mound. Bagwell rocked him with the patented Bagwell swing to RCF, and the Astros had a fast, somewhat unexpected 3-0 lead. Houston kept pounding, too. Jeff Kent followed with a single to CF, and Lance Berkman followed that hit with a monstrous drive up on to Tal's Hill. It was good for another run, but Berkman stopped when with, I thought, just a little more effort, he could have made it to 3B. Had the blast occurred later in the game, perhaps he would gone a little harder, but he was probably figuring that Richard Hidalgo or Brad Ausmus would drive him in. No such luck. Both Hidalgo and Ausmus struck out looking, as Nomo pulled himself together to leave Berkman on 2B. At the time, I wanted the Astros to get greedy and push that run across, but it was an efficient inning even as it was, and with a solid defense behind him, Miller already had as much support from the offense as he needed.

LA loaded the bases in the third on an error by Bagwell, a hit, and a walk. A base hit by Beltre scored one run, but Hidalgo made sure that was all the Dodgers would get. He nailed Paul LoDuca at the plate on the Beltre hit, thanks not only to his strong throw from shallow RF but a fine swing-around tag to the left by Ausmus. There was some degree of controversy about whether LoDuca was safe or not. I thought he was out, and home plate umpire Jerry Layne thought so, too. From that point on, Miller was very tough. All of his pitches were working tonight, and he wound up striking out five and walking only one in giving the Astros seven innings.

Houston added its final two runs in the fifth, thanks to a Bagwell double to LF, an intentional walk to Berkman, and two-out hits by Ausmus and Everett. That was it for Nomo, and pretty much it for the Dodgers, as well. Although the hits weren't nearly as numerous as they were Tuesday night, what hits there were came from all three parts of the batting order, top middle, and bottom, and that's a continuing good sign for the Astros' attack.

Rested bullpenners Brad Lidge and Dan Miceli finished the game even as Guillermo Mota and Andy Ashby were completely blanking the Astros over the final three innings. As was pointed out on the telecast, Lidge's and Miceli's work will free both Octavio Dotel and Billy Wagner to work in Thursday night's series finale if that should be necessary, and it just might be, if Tim Redding gives an uneven performance. Even if Redding is great, though, either Dotel or Wagner might be needed to bolt down the win.

That win could be cruicial. It used to be the Astros' philosophy under Larry Dierker (and still is, to some degree, under Jimy Williams) to just win series--two out of three, three out of four, whatever it took. That mindset used to drive me crazy. It still does, I guess. Even though a ballclub has to know it's not going to win every game, it has to believe that it will and play like it will. That is the mindset of the greatest teams in baseball--the Yankees, the Braves, the Mariners. I'm not forgetting their talent, but physical talent always, always has a mental component, and these teams are conditioned to focus on each and every game. That's how you win 114 and 116 games, and how you accumulate an 84-47 record with a month to go in the season.

A team that wins only series can be successful with that philosophy over a long period of time--just ask the Astros themselves. But teams which think like that can also find themselves late in the season in exactly the spot the Astros of 1997 and '99 and 2001 found themselves, and that the Astros of 2003 find themselves now: the spot of having to win every game over a long stretch just to stay a hair's breadth ahead of the competition. It's possible that Houston could pull away a bit by the very end of this month or early in September, but it isn't likely. What will be needed, however, whether to pull away or simply stay ahead, is the kind of mental sharpness we've seen in the last three games stretched out over the final thirty contests. That kind of extended mental and physical challenge could wear on the Astros, and leave them in not the best of shape for the playoffs if they make them. (Might the same kind of weariness have been an unspoken factor in the NLDS of 1999 and 2001?).

On the other hand, there's a line Vince Lombardi used to use on his Green Bay Packers every year around this time that might come in handy for the Astros. As Jerry Kramer recorded in his great book Instant Replay, Lombardi would absolutely kill his teams during two-a-days--doing up-downs, tackling dummies, agility drills, full-pad scrimmages, the whole schemere--then haul his dog-tired, sweaty team into the film room and announce, "Gentlemen, tomorrow we start the big push." The rookies would all look flabbergasted, and even the veterans like Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston and Herb Adderley would look at the old man like he was crazy, knowing there was no way on earth that they could give him one more sprint or one more bloody collision in a scrimmage. But they gave it to him anyway in the heat of August, because the veterans knew that when the cold came to Lambeau Field in November and December, they'd be in condition, and they'd be unbeatable--not because they had more talent than any other team in the NFL (only the 1962 Packers could have made that claim)--but because they were mentally tougher than any other team they played.

The season is longer in baseball, and the conditioning different, but the principle of mental toughness is still the same, no matter the sport. Those teams that commit to toughness will win. That's how you get historic streaks like 37 out of the last 44 from the New York Giants of '51, or a streak like the Athletics put together to overtake the Mariners a few seasons back, when Oakland looked dead in April and on life support at midseason. That's the challenge that confronts the Astros over these last thirty games. Sweeping the remaining games of this, the longest homestand of the season, I would regard as a difficult necessity, and a feat worthy of high praise if it happens, but such a sweep will get us only to the most critical part of the schedule. As happy as it would make all of us to see the Astros sweep the Dodgers and the Padres out of town, my inclination, if I had the authority to do it, would be to march into the Houston locker room on Sunday, look the players in the eye on the eve of their West Coast road trip, and say,

"Gentlemen, tomorrow we start the big push."