For fans watching by television, the most unsettling moment in a game filled with unsettling moments at the ballpark in downtown Houston Monday night came when, before the ninth inning, Fox Sports Southwest played a brief tape of Greg Lucas's pre-game interview with Billy Wagner. Although I can't quote Wagner exactly, the sentiment behind his words, spoken before the start of one of the biggest games of the season, is something I believe I can reproduce, and it was telling. We've never played well against these guys, Wagner said, referring to the Giants. I don't know what it is. I guess the biggest thing going for us is that we have Kent now, not them; but they're in the playoffs and we're having to fight to get there, he said. It's tough.

After Pedro Feliz and Ray Durham cracked two homers good for three runs in the ninth against Wagner, snapping a 3-3 tie, the Astros' hunt for the playoffs became even tougher. The blasts by Feliz and Durham were part of a four-homer night for San Francisco in a deflating 6-3 triumph over the Astros (84-72). Houston now finds itself soundly kicked back into a first-place tie in the NL Central with the idle Chicago Cubs, with the St. Louis Cardinals only 3.5 games in back of both teams.

Wagner (1-4) pitched tonight like he didn't want to be out there. He pitched scared, while the Giants swung at the plate with all the confidence of a team 11-1 at Houston's new digs and about to go 12-1. Jose Cruz Jr. started the uprising with a one-out looping hit to shallow CF. Craig Biggio had no chance to come in on the ball and make a catch, and thus San Francisco had the tie-breaking run on base in the person of a man who could steal 2B easily.

There was no need for a steal. Feliz, a late-game, double-switch replacement, hammered a Wagner fastball off the outside corner into the RCF bullpen to give the Giants a 5-3 lead, matching the two-run lead they had grabbed in the early innings against Ron Villone, but this lead cut the heart right out of Wagner and the Astros. Even with the long memory of two ferocious bottom-of-the-ninth home victories in April to cling to, we knew there was no chance of that happening again tonight. One could see the defeat in Wagner's face, feel it as he attempted to pitch to the next batter, Ray Durham. Wagner missed with yet another fastball to San Francisco's leadoff hitter, leaving it much too much over the plate, and Durham blasted it deep into the Crawford Boxes for San Francisco's final run. The park, nearly filled with over 36,000 fans, was eerily silent after these blasts. Even the TV crew, who often talk because television demands that they talk, were stunned into speechlessness. "I don't know what to say," murmured Bill Worrell after a few seconds of dead air.

There's not a lot one can say after a loss like this and, for once, I'm not going to try. Astroday prides itself on being thoughtful and literate even under the most difficult of circumstances, but my reactions tonight are not likely to strike anyone as particularly thoughtful. Nevertheless, I am going to say what's on my mind without bothering to defend it as thoroughly as I usually do. The first and most dominant impression I had tonight is embedded in this column's title. I think Wagner fell victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think the contemporary Giants have done a psych job on Wagner and on the Astros as a whole. Neither Wagner nor his team wants to fail, but they do. I think--for tonight, at least--there was a reason for that failure, although the reason isn't going to sound any more rational than saying Wagner is psyched out about facing the Giants.

Before I get to that reason, let me say--and stress--that I thought Jimy Williams made all the right moves tonight, including bringing Wagner into a tied game in the ninth inning, a tactic that always gives me the creeps, even when it works. Williams had no choice but to do that Monday. Everything he did was meant to give the Astros every chance to hang on to the 3-2 lead they had earned, and to keep the game tied after the Giants had evened it up. The fault for the Astros' loss lies with Houston's offense, which froze in the bottom of the fifth when presented with a bases-loaded, one-out situation that could have blown the game wide open in Houston's favor.

The fault also lies in another direction, and here, I must simply write the words:

Tonight's game featured the worst umpiring behind home plate I have ever seen.

Ballplayers and coaches are enjoined by rule not to argue balls and strikes, but no such rule covers me. I do, however, believe that Tom Hanks' classic line in A League Of Their Own, "There's no crying in baseball!" is the single best thing anybody's ever said about this sport, and it stands as a guide to conduct in, and commentary about, that sport for all time. Therefore, let me also categorically state that the Giants won this one fair and square. There is nothing--in any sport--so final, so undeniable, so incontrovertible as a major-league home run and San Francisco hit four of 'em in this game.

Nevertheless, I repeat: tonight's home-plate umpiring, by Kevin Kelley, was the worst I have ever seen. At the best, that umpiring could be called exceptionally controversial; but that's the kindest thing I can say about it. It was, literally, unbelievable at times. Kelley began with a low strike zone down around the players' ankles--never mind the knees. By game's end, his strike zone had moved upward, to the extent that high strikes he was calling weren't strikes, either. I have an analogy drawn from my old life as a college writing instructor that may help explain the effect of Kelley's zone, and why that zone mattered Monday. The standards one uses to grade a freshman composition are as subjective in interpretation as an umpire's strike zone. That is not to say there aren't standards. There are; they are even written down in 99% of college departments of English. But instructors, like umpires, have their own standards in grading--their own strike zone--if you will, within which the students must work. The task of the teacher every semester is to set strict, consistent, reachable standards for students to meet. Usually, that means the standards will be strict all the way through the term. If the students meet them (and many, if not most, do), then all is well. A teacher might even ease up just a bit as the semester moves along, if the students have got the hang of what's being taught. Trouble comes, however, when the teacher allows either one or both of two things to happen: to have loose standards that suddenly tighten around midterm, or, a set of standards that fluctuates wildly from one paper to the next. The students don't know what to expect; they don't know the standard they're expected to meet, and they rebel faster than Captain Bligh's crew on the Bounty.

I believe that Kelley fell into the second of those two pits Monday, and although there was no overt arguing of balls and strikes tonight, his fluctuating strike zone, alternating from absurdly low to much-too-high to a completely undefined inside or outside corner, made things very difficult for the Giants and impossible for the Astros. The ump could perhaps be given some benefit of the doubt on the outside corner calls (perhaps some of those pitches were as outside as Kelley said they were) but, even then, there were many that should have been strikes for both teams. Houston's bullpen surrendered the lead in the seventh when Brad Lidge and Octavio Dotel, both in relief of Ron Villone, walked four consecutive men to load the bases and then force in a run. It is arguable that Lidge's difficulties were mostly his own, but I believe also quite strongly that Kelley's strike zone was a major factor. What else can one expect but four walks in a row when the umpire won't give a corner call on a pitch that was right there? The Astros' pitchers never did figure out where Kelley's zone was, and he, with the gradual move upward from the fourth inning onward, didn't help them.

The result was, in some ways, a game terrifying to watch. I know now what the Braves felt like when Eric Gregg did them in behind the plate in the 1997 NLCS. Houston would have escaped the seventh and it would perhaps have even scored in the fifth under a strike zone called by any other umpire I can think of, including two guys I don't like, Bruce Froemming and Dan Iassogna. The plate work forced the Astros' hurlers to make pitches in spots they don't normally have to hit to get strike calls. So tough was that task Monday that by the seventh, no one knew where to throw the ball to get a strike at all.

It is remarkable, given the plate umpiring, that the game played by the players was as good as it was. The base umpiring was exemplary, and the Astros did a breathtaking job of staying close by virtue of their defense and cleverness on offense after the Giants busted out to a 2-0 lead on a homer in the first by Marquis Grissom and a homer in the second by Andres Galarraga. Lance Berkman started slicing into that lead with a double in the third that struck off the LF scoreboard and was awkwardly played by Barry Bonds, who looked like he'd rather be anywhere but in LF on Monday. Richard Hidalgo singled to LF, moving Berkman to 3B. Brad Ausmus rapped into a 4-6-3 double play, killing a large inning, but at least getting a run home. When Adam Everett doubled to CF, Houston had a paper chance of getting the tying run across, but Villone struck out. I'd give anything if the hit he had later could have been transplanted here.

In the top of the third, Houston's defense helped Villone get out of a monumental mess. Giant starting pitcher Jerome Williams singled to LF leading off. Durham forced Williams at 2B on a fine stop by Everett. Everett then made an even greater stop on a shot into the hole by Grissom that went for a hit. What was worrisome at the time was that, though Villone wasn't giving up many hits, the balls that were touched off him were all hit hard, even the foul balls. Aurelia walked, and that loaded the bases. Every eye in the place rolled as Barry Bonds stepped up with the bases loaded. The Astros employed their right side of the infield shift, as they always do against Bonds, and it worked, thanks to a terrifically athletic play by Everett. Everett, playing as the man closest to 2B, with Kent out in the OF grass, grabbed Bonds's roller and raced to the 2B bag. Tagging it, he had just enough time to go airborne and get off a relay throw that was low but dug out of the dirt by Bagwell. Houston had prevented the Giants from breaking the game open, and they would go on to tie the game and take the lead with some hard hitting and clever play-calling in the fourth.

Berkman singled to CF, going about the only place that Jerome Williams allowed his fine sinker to be hit. Williams did hang a slider every once in a while, however, and on such a pitch, Hidalgo ripped a monstrous triple up Tal's Hill that Grissom got a glove on but really had no chance to hold. Berkman scored to tie the game, then Williams called for the squeeze and Ausmus excuted it beautifully, bunting the ball back to Williams, whose only play was to 1B.

The Astros, as I say, had a chance in the fifth to bust the game wide open, but they failed, a sequence even more painful, perhaps, than the homers in the ninth. Morgan Ensberg doubled with one out; Bagwell singled to shallow LF; Kent was hit in the back by a pitch. The sacks were loaded for Berkman, who had already done damage tonight. Whom the baseball gods would destroy, they first make mad with hope: Berkman, batting his usual left-handed way Monday, utterly crushed a foul ball to RF that would have been a homer if it had been fair, and then, Williams froze him on an inside corner call for strike three. The pitch was astounding in two ways: first, that Kelley called it a strike after denying both corners so often; and second, that Berkman would dare risk letting such a pitch go by in an utterly crucial spot. It was left to Hidalgo to try to extend the lead, but he failed, and quickly so, popping out foul to 1B.

The inability to get more runs would eventually cost the Astros, but the four walks in the seventh--to Galarraga, Cruz, pinch-hitter J.T. Snow, and Durham--were marginally more tolerable than the fifth-inning failure because of the hopeless, nothin'-you can-do-about-it strike zone of Kelley. Houston will bounce back at the plate on Tuesday night, even against Jason Schmidt (whom they've handled well in the past), because there's no way in the world Chuck Meriwether's strike zone could be as frustrating as Kelley's was.

Whether Wagner can bounce back is another question. This has been his finest season as the Astros' closer, and one would expect that he would bounce back. Williams lifted him after the Durham homer in hopes of using him later in the series, but I sensed more than just the usual head-shaking admiration for the Giants in Wagner's pre-game words. I heard the voice of a tough man who feels himself licked before he ever sets foot on the field. It remains to be seen whether the Astros as a team, as a whole, will fall victim to that self-fulfilling prophecy, or whether they will realize they are still tied for first place, with their own destiny in their hands, and possessing as good a shot to win the division as a home-field advantage over the final six games of the regular season will allow.