At times, baseball players and their fans can feed off each other's emotions. It was that way when the Astros battled the Phillies in the 1980 NLCS and that way again when the Astros and Mets went to war in 1986. In both of those series, the crowds responded to every bit of the effort the players were putting out, absorbed every charge of tension in the air, and gave them back to the players as they watched, allowing Terry Puhl and Joe Niekro, Mike Scott and Billy Hatcher, to do extraordinary, even super-human things. The opposition, too, rises to the occasion in such a circumstance, as the exploits of Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, the nearly-forgotten Marty Bystrom, Lenny Dykstra, and Jesse Orosco will attest as they broke our hearts in those series with their greatness.

Saturday night's game in Houston was one worthy to set beside those post-season classics. Desperate for a win, the St. Louis Cardinals relied upon their best, Matt Morris, to pitch them to a victory that would gain back the game in the standings they had lost the night before. Vigorously, even bitterly contested from the opening out on Fernando Vina down at 1B, tonight's game was also one of the swiftest of the year. For seven innings Morris was excellent, as he nearly always is when he faces the Astros, but he was beaten by a playoff-caliber performance from Roy Oswalt (8-5) who, along with Octavio Dotel and Billy Wagner, shut out the Cardinals on five hits while Jeff Bagwell homered and Craig Biggio doubled to drive in both Houston runs in an electrifying 2-0 win. Houston (80-68) maintained its one-game lead on the Chicago Cubs but, just as important, pushed the Cardinals to 4.5 games back, the very edge of the cliff in the NL Central standings.

One couldn't ask for two pitchers to be any sharper than Oswalt and Morris were tonight. I can think of one or two duels earlier this season and of Randy Johnson's losing duel with Kevin Brown in the 1998 NLDS as quick examples of comparable games wherein two pitchers were both on their games, but that short list is in itself testimony to how sharp both men were. The difference was that Morris just wasn't quite as sharp. Home plate umpire Jerry Crawford had a very tight strike zone all night, one that squeezed Morris both low and on the corners. The Cardinals' lineup, their bench, and their coaches rode Crawford all game long, spewing baseball invective of the highest quality his way, making the spirits of Rogers Hornsby and Bob Gibson proud. Crawford tried to control events by tossing out C Mike Matheny in the top of the third, then coach Dave Duncan in the bottom of the third, but he was largely unsuccessful. Tony LaRussa took up the challenge and continued to contest balls and strikes where he could (not to mention the ejection of his catcher), but the tension St. Louis was feeling may have given the Astros the slightest of competitive edges. Twice in the game Morris barked at Crawford for questionable calls, and once, perhaps, he let the pressure of the moment get to him. Bagwell picked an 0-2 fastball off the corner in the fourth inning and drove it into the RF seats for his 35th homer of the season for Houston's first run, and Craig Biggio hammered a double off the top of the scoreboard in LF, barely missing a homer, but getting Brad Ausmus, who had singled, across the plate with run number two in the fifth.

Oswalt made both of those runs stand up with one of the best games--maybe the best game--pitched by a single Astros hurler all year. Wade Miller had a dominating game early in the season, but Oswalt was exceptional under the gun tonight in his second game back after stint number three on the DL. I had mentioned last night how the Cardinals had beaten Oswalt, even pounded him, in the past. What was different tonight? Some might point to his curveball, which was even better than it usually is, making Jim Edmonds lunge for a pitch that simply wasn't there at least twice; but even more important was how Oswalt used his pitches in combination. He changed speeds off both his fastball and his curve beautifully Saturday. In this, we might also credit Brad Ausmus, who, in calling the game, changed a typical sequence (say, fastball-fastball-curve) to a more-difficult-to-time sequence of fastball-curve-curve. The Cardinals could never adjust to what was coming and, in a subtle difference with every other Oswalt game against the Cardinals, only once--in the fifth or sixth inning, I think it was--were the Cardinals able to do as they had done in other games and flick off several foul balls in a row against him and wait for a fastball they could drive. Oswalt worked his way past that rough patch and through seven innings and 94 pitches he was simply great, allowing only four hits and striking out eight. He walked no one and left only two men in scoring position, Scott Rolen in the fourth and Fernando Vina in the sixth. The defense behind him was superb as well. Adam Everett made a fantastic play in the hole at SS in the fourth on Edgar Renteria; Richard Hidalgo made a fine running catch in LCF mid-game to save a hit; and Biggio made a rolling catch on ball hit by Tino Martinez in the seventh.

Although he got behind on his batters, Octavio Dotel also got them out in the eighth, in his first appearance since injuring himself last week. The key out for him was the first one, getting the speedy Kerry Robinson to chase a 3-2 fastball that would have been ball four. Billy Wagner had better command in the ninth. After giving up a single to RF to Jim Edmonds, Wagner got Albert Pujols to bounce into a difficult 4-6-3 double play, and he then struck out Scott Rolen looking on three straight fastballs to put a ribbon around save number 42 on the season.

It's terribly tempting to talk briefly about the upcoming road trip right now, but I won't do that. There is still game number three in this series to be played Sunday afternoon, when Tim Redding takes the hill for the Astros. Hear this well: although it may be hip to think so, the Cardinals are not dead, even with this loss; they are not out of the race yet, and Houston dare not think that way. Nor is this the greatest time in the world to fiddle with the lineup, even for a Sunday game. There are so few games left, and the race still so tight, that I expect Biggio to be in Sunday's lineup, particularly in view of the off day on Monday for rest and travel. A win for the Cardnals against Redding (who must, in my view, step up and give the Astros a fine game or dwindle in the thinking of Astros management in regard to a playoff start) would pull them back to within 3.5 games, and send the Astros off to the High House of Horrors in Colorado with either a tie or the slimmest of divisional leads and two teams breathing down their necks. With a bad series in Denver, the Astros could watch St. Louis get right back into contention for the division. On the other hand, a Houston win Sunday, a series sweep, would effectively finish off the Cardinals, I believe. Sunday's, then, is a "swing" game in the standings in a more general sense than we usually use that term. The Cardinals are not the immediate challenger as the second-place Cubs would be in a swing game, but Houston can nonetheless eliminate the Cardinals from being a threat the rest of the season if they come out as sharp, as focused as they have for these last two games.