Mission Control

The baseball gods have provided us with two taut series for our rooting pleasure, or one and a half if, like me, you haven’t been able to stay up late enough to watch the Yankees and Red Sox conclude their last two games.

Throughout New England and New York this morning a lot of people will be arriving late to work in no particular shape to perform their jobs properly. Fortunately, their bosses will be in the same condition and won’t notice or can’t.

Only a few days ago it appeared New York would sweep the Red Sox and sit back to await the survivor of the NLCS, but Boston’s David Ortiz refuses to begin his off-season just yet. For the second night in a row he ended a veritable marathon with a game-winning hit. Sunday night’s game lasted over five hours and went twelve innings; last night’s game concluded just shy of six hours and ended in the fourteenth inning. As the series moves back to New York with the Yankees leading 3-2 the momentum not to mention pressure all of a sudden has shifted.

Meanwhile, deep in the heart of Texas and throughout the Heartland the local populace may be slightly more rested than their brethren in the Northeast but their collective nerves must be a tad frayed.

Houston’s Brandon Backe, a converted outfielder, pitched the game of his life last night, limiting the mighty Cardinals lineup to one lone hit over eight innings. St. Louis starter Woody Williams matched Backe’s effort pitch for pitch, yielding a single hit as well over seven innings. In the end the game came down to a battle of bullpens and once again the Astros’ Brad Lidge was superb while the Cards’ Jason Isringhausen was not, serving up Jeff Kent’s walk-off three-run homer. The difference between the first two games in St. Louis and the three games just completed in Houston is that the Astros were finally able to hand the ball to Lidge, who appeared in his third straight game. As the series shifts to St. Louis the Cardinals are feeling all the pressure while the Astros, who prior to this year had never advanced to the second round of a playoff series in their history, are one game away from the World Series. If they make it all the way, one of the subplots everyone is eager to see, Roger Clemens facing either one of his former teams, will take place.

It would be hard to bet against the Cardinals, whose lineup can and does explode at any moment, but Houston has the look of a team on a mission.