Life is so long and its challenges so great that things we wish for to see us through it--a satisfying job, a loving family, an adequate income--are frequently uppermost in our minds. Yet, the things that make us happiest day by day as mortal human beings involve, more often than not, small wishes, even insignificant wishes, when judged against the larger, more necessary pursuits of life.

I have a confession to make. Exactly how many games the Astros have played as part of an ESPN telecast in the years since that cable network was formed is a number I do not know. I do know that the Astros have won at least a few of those games. But those victories, however many they may be, have nearly always left me a little cold emotionally and gnawingly unsatisfied. If the pitching has been good, the offense has been a little off. If the team has barged out to a big lead early, that lead might be completely lost by the end of the game. We might recall the Astros' 5-4 win against the Padres in Game Two of the 1998 NLDS. As great as it was, the luster of that victory was dimmed by the unbelievable freakishness of Jim Leyritz's two-run, ninth-inning, opposite-field homer off the RF foul pole against Billy Wagner that tied the game and left it deeply in doubt until Bill Spiers singled home Ricky Gutierrez with the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth. We might recall, too, Shane Reynolds' domination of the Braves in game one of the 1999 NLDS in Atlanta, and Ken Caminiti's three-run bomb in the ninth that sealed a 6-1 win. But that victory, as we know now (and probably knew then) only delayed the inevitable Atlanta series triumph. Both of those games were broadcast by ESPN. Although the Astros had better fortune some seventeen and twenty-three years before when ABC carried the regular season and the playoffs, let us pass by in reverent silence the electric calls of Keith Jackson and Tim McCarver working those games against the Phillies and the Mets, as the Astros failed with as much heart and as much character as any two teams which ever put on a playoff uniform. It will be enough to confine myself to the last fifteen years, during the ascendancy of the most dominant television network devoted to a single subject, sports. During those years, whether the Astros have lost or scraped by with a win, more times than I can count, I have breathed this prayer as I lay down to sleep on a Sunday or a Wednesday night after an Astros' national TV game; it's not a sacred prayer, so I can't couch it for you in sacred language; I can only give it to you in the same way as I have offered it up to Whoever might be listening up there:

"Just once," I say, "just once, I wish the Astros would absolutely clock another good team with all of ESPN looking on."

That's it. Just as small, as insignificant--some would even say as petty--a thing as a man might wish for, but there it is. And on Friday night, in front of 38,997 Cardinals fans and a large ESPN audience, my wish was granted. The Astros played a practically perfect game, combining all the elements--razor-sharp pitching, relentless hitting, and astounding fielding--to take apart St. Louis 8-1 and push Tony LaRussa's club to the very brink of elimination in the NL Central race. More important, the superb all-around effort enabled the Astros (84-69) to extend their division lead to a critical game and a half over the Chicago Cubs who, in splitting a doubleheader tonight, were pressed to the uttermost by the Pirates in Pittsburgh.

Perhaps it means nothing in the larger scheme of things, but tonight, at long, long last, ESPN's cameras caught the Astros at their very best. Yes, I know Houston was coming off a 6-0 shutout of the Rockies in Denver only Thursday--a very impressive performance, but we measure a team's best not only by what they themselves do, but also by the quality of their oppostion. Although every win in September is vital (as the Astros have proved in pounding down the stretch with a 13-4 record, only to find Chicago still a heartbeat away), there is almost no comparison between beating a poor Rockies team, even in its home park, and taking on a division rival with a top-notch lineup in its own house. Judged by that criterion--and only a playoff game would invoke a higher standard--Houston played as well as it can play Friday. It took apart the Cardinals from the opening inning, banging around Matt Morris, the best starting pitcher St. Louis has, for six runs and eight hits over five innings, while Roy Oswalt (9-5) not only survived seven innings in the cool, autumnal air, he was brilliant in doing so, yielding only one run and five hits over that time, walking two and striking out five.

Behind him, Houston's defense was as good as I've ever seen it in a given game, and I am reaching back in my memory to the tremendous glove work of the 1979 and 1980 Astros, the two best defensive teams I ever watched, for comparison. Nothing got by the Astros tonight, whether St. Louis tried to smoke the ball past Adam Everett at SS or dribble the ball past Geoff Blum or Jeff Kent, or bang it beyond Richard Hidalgo and Craig Biggio. Even Houston's one mistake tonight--Jeff Bagwell getting caught in a rundown between 2B and 3B--turned out well because the Cardinals made far more mistakes than one, including not covering the bases, and Bagwell, like his teammates, hustled from first pitch to last and made it back to the bag safely. Houston, then, even in small ways, extended its streak of extraordinarily well-focused play under pressure to a level we haven't seen in September since the 2001 season, and really, in my recollection, haven't seen over this long a period since the 1980 season. Some of you might challenge me on this observation because of what the 1986 Astros did, and what the Astros of 1999 and 2001 accomplished, but let me make clear the difference, and make clear what I mean. The 1986 Astros were blisteringly hot in August and September, going 49-25 over the final 74 games of the regular season. They won the NL West by ten games, and were never seriously challenged in September. The 1999 Astros were streaky and uneven over the final two months of the season. A twelve-game winning skein could gain them only a game and a half over the Reds, and the two teams were tied for first place with only five games to go because neither team could get hot enough to shake the other. The 2001 Astros slumped in September, getting swept by the Giants at home, forcing our guys to put forth a Herculean effort against the Cardinals to win two out of three on the road the last weekend of the year.

Things were different in 1980. That year, the Dodgers at one point early in September held a two-game lead. Houston steamed its way through most of that month, however, and we fans were having an out-of-body experience as the Astros built up a three-game lead on LA with three games to go. History will show--and my blood pressure will verify--that the final weekend in Los Angeles, as the Dodgers won three excruciating games in a row, represented three of the most traumatic days any Houston baseball fan has ever endured, but it needs to be said not only that the Art Howe-led Astros won the division in the end with a thrilling 7-1 playoff win, but also that it was Houston's terrific play as a team during the whole of that month which forced LA to have to win those three games even to force the playoff. I didn't think LA could beat Houston's pitching staff three games in a row, even in Dodger Stadium, and I still don't quite believe it now that they did, but I can tip my cap to them these days in a way I never would have dreamed of doing when that race was still in question.

I hope you understand my point: that we are seeing a race in the NL Central this year that, although it appears to be similar to other close divisonal races of the past, isn't really similar, and a race in which the Astros' performance to date may well be the finest extended performance under pressure, with a high-quality club right behind them, that they've ever given us.

Bagwell stepped up immediately Friday and blasted Houston into a 2-0 lead. After Biggio was hit by a Morris pitch leading off the first, Bagwell guessed right on a sinker that Morris couldn't get to sink enough. Bagwell went down and got it, driving it the opposite way to RF, a low-arc ball that had the patented Bagwell carry to it. RF Eduardo Perez thought he had it measured, but he had to keep on moving back to the short wall in order to give himself a chance to make the catch. He wound up crashing into that wall for his efforts, as Bagwell's 37th home run of the season cleared the fence, barely beyond Perez's reach. He went nearly head-over-heels in his vain attempt, symbolic, I suppose, of the shaken-up way in which the Cardinals have experienced the season, a season in which nothing has gone quite the way they expected it to.

Bagwell's homer gave Houston two early runs, runs we might have figured the club would have to scratch and claw for over nine full innings. But the homer drove whatever fight there was in St. Louis right out of them. To their credit, however, none of the Astros took the silence in the stadium for granted. Oswalt stepped to the hill in the bottom of the first and surely marvelled as much as we over what the defense behind him did. With one out, Orlando Palmiero dribbled a hit toward 3B. But even this early, two batters into the game, Oswalt was throwing confidently, with apparent command of all quadrants of the zone. He reared back and gave Albert Pujols a pitch the latter could drive, yet Adam Everett blocked what might have been a double on the grass of CF. Everett gloved that hard shot grounder--Lord, I don't see how he got to it that deep in the hole--and still had time to flip to Kent, who steamed a relay to Bagwell for a double play that just crushed the incipient rally. The play at 1B on Pujols was closer than you might think (in fact, to my eye, Pujols beat it), but the 6-4-3 double play was so swiftly and securely excuted that the Astros might have received the benefit of the doubt.

The next inning was an inning in which the Astros expanded their lead to 4-0 and it was the inning in which I experienced the only moment of disatisfaction I had the entire night. Hidalgo rocked his 28th homer of the season to LF leading off, Brad Ausmus ripped a single through the middle and Everett found the most adorable little RF corner for the slicing triple he hit that scored Ausmus with run number four. I was already breathless with the sharpness of Houston's play to this point, but I saw Everett standing on 3B with nobody out, and I wanted that run, right now. The Astros tried to give it to me, but just couldn't get him home. Oswalt popped to 2B and Biggio's screaming liner to 3B was enough to get Everett doubled off. Perhaps I should have known better with Oswalt on the mound but, as the inning closed, I found myself hoping that missed run wouldn't cost Houston the game.

Houston's defense shone brightly once more in the bottom half of the second. J.D. walked leading off, on four straight pitches, if I remember correctly, and, with two out, Perez doubled to LF, scoring Drew. When Mike Matheny grounded a single to RF that had Perez churning for home, I really was regretting the run that Everett couldn't score; but I didn't count on (and the Cardinals completely discounted) the arm of Hidalgo. Moving quickly in and barehanding the ball, Hidalgo fired in on the fly to Ausmus, who had to step away from the plate to his right in order to field the throw. That meant that a tag on Perez was going to have to be of the sweep variety, and Ausmus was perfect in his excution of it. Neither Perez nor the Cardinals' bench put up a fuss because Ausmus's tag was righ there, high up on Perez's back at least a full beat before his leg touched home. St. Louis was denied a big inning, not by a freakish, once in a lifetime play, but by a well-executed defensive effort from a team that is as locked-in as I have seen them in many a year, in every phase of the game.

It was the Cardinals who cracked under the pressure Friday. In the third, after Morris, of all people, battled and battled Oswalt over twelve pitches or so before finally flying out, Bo Hart made the big mistake of going after Oswalt's first pitch and grounding out to 3B, thereby turning what could have been and should have been a taxing inning for Oswalt into just a near-normal stint on the mound. Palmiero grounded to 2B end things, and Oswalt used a 4-6-3 double play to squelch the Cards again in the fouth before Houston's offense went back to work.

In the fifth with one out, Blum singled. Bagwell looked like he was fighting a pitch off inside, for heaven's sake, but he was actually pulling it high down into the LF corner for a double that scored Blum. Kent singled hard to LCF to plate Bagwell, and the Astros had an insurmountable 6-1 lead. I found it remarkble that LaRussa made no change at this point. He stayed with Morris, risking even more damage, which I guess is yet another testimony to the poverty of the St. Louis bullpen. Jeff Fassero and Russ Springer were eventually called upon for the sixth and seventh in Fassero's case and the eighth in Springer's, but Oswalt and his bullpen dominated the remainder of the game. Brad Lidge, although he gave up a stat sheet single in the eighth, made the Cards look silly in chasing after his unhittable slider and 97-m.p.h. fastball. The Astros, meanwhile, reached the Cardinals' 'pen for two runs in the ninth off Jim Journell. Bagwell singled to RF, but was forced by Kent. Berkman walked, and Hidalgo rapped an RBI hit to LCF. Ausmus singled to RF, scoring Berkman, and forcing another bullpen move, this time to Jason Simontacchi. Curious how the move came so quickly here to a pitcher who, last year, the Astros could not solve at all, rather than back in the fifth, when the game was still within reach for St. Louis.

Billy Wagner, fresh and cool, worked the ninth for the work's sake and was hardly pressed, getting flyouts from Pujols, Eli Marrero and Scott Rolen to end it.

Through it all, the ESPN crew of Dave O'Brien, Tony Gwynn, and Rick Sutcliffe were giving the Astros props we haven't heard outside Astros' country all season long. As the evening began, the focus of the commentary was on how close the Cubs were to Houston despite the fact that Chicago was, after all, in second place. But as the game unfolded, and the superior elements of the Astros' daily game began to show themselves--Bagwell's and Hidalgo's hitting, Everett's defense, Oswalt's pitching, Lidge's and Wagner's air-tight relief--the broadcast region of the country saw what you and I have seen for the entire month of September: a team playing at peak efficiency--and the commentary of O'Brien, Gwynn, and Sutcliffe began to shift, as it should have, from thoughts of what Chicago would do in the postseason to the evidence before their eyes of a team that, though it could be overtaken by the Cubs, is not about to relinquish first place without a fight.

The battle for the Central is not yet over, of course. There are still nine intense, must-win games left to play, one of which is Saturday afternoon when Tim Redding draws Brett Tomko, but the simple praise of Bagwell and Biggio, of Wagner and Lidge and Hidalgo, gladdened my heart tonight. What's more, it was praise the ballclub deeply deserved after playing one of its finest games in a month of nothing but fine games. If that weren't sweet enough, after so many years of watching a team whose day-by-day fundamental soundness is seldom appreciated by the national media, Friday's game, telecast on the biggest sports network of 'em all, may finally enable the Astros to reap, not publicity from the media, which they don't need and don't care that much about, but respect, which the media should have been giving them for years and is long overdue.

We are enjoined by folk wisdom to be careful what we wish for, and I am heeding that warning even in tonight's Astroday because the race is much too tight for any semblance of overconfidence. Besides, as I told you, wishing that one's favorite team could finally display for all the world the excellence that you yourself have seen and hear that excellence praised is a small thing, indeed, and it is, in the end, not really the baseball wish I keep closest in my thoughts. You know what that bigger wish is, for all of you share it with me. In the meantime, until that wish is fulfilled, I remain convinced, with Friday's game as sparkling evidence, that it is the small wishes of life that often bring us the most happiness, the deepest sense of satisfaction. It isn't every night we get to see a game as close to perfect as the one we saw a few hours ago, but we did see it. I'm glad so many others outside the normal broadcast range of Astros fans were able to see it, too. They saw Houston baseball at its best.