St. Louis – Brad Lidge did breathe Tuesday. He even ate lunch and laughed. He left the gasping to Houston Astros fans still reeling from the most painful loss in the club’s 44-year history.
During an optional workout at Busch Stadium, Lidge watched replays as Albert Pujols carved his initials into baseball’s family tree, hammering a winning three-run home run Monday night.
Knowing Lidge’s personality, convinced he won’t self-destruct, his teammates attempted to turn a career abyss into a lighthearted joke.
“Oh, we kidded him the whole time on the plane,” said Roy Oswalt, Houston’s starter tonight in Game 6 opposite St. Louis’ Mark Mulder. “We actually told him (the plane) almost got hit by the ball when we took off. That’s the thing about baseball: Once it happens, it’s over. A closer has to have amnesia.”
The few teammates lingering Monday said all the right things. That there will be no emotional hangover, that Lidge remains their version of Fort Knox. Nonetheless, the nature of the hit, the magnitude of the moment, raised a chilling question prominent at water coolers across the nation: Should the Astros have pitched to Pujols?
It is a complicated issue, on some levels a Catch-22. A compelling statistical case can be made that Pujols should have been removed from the equation, intentionally walked or given nothing within the 713 area code to hit.
For starters, Pujols had failed only once with runners in scoring position during their series, misfiring in Monday’s first inning. He strode to the plate hitless in four at-bats, significant because only three times this season – the last Aug. 29 at Florida – had he gone 0-for-5. Before every series, teams identify the one player they don’t want to let beat them. With the Cardinals, that’s Pujols, end of discussion.
What’s more, Reggie Sanders, the man on deck, has long been an easy mark for Lidge. He is 0-for-8 against the right-hander with six strikeouts and has slumped horribly since injuring his back and neck in a nasty fall during Game 2.
“A lot of things were discussed,” Lidge said Monday after the game. “But we wanted to go (after Pujols).”
The delicate problem arose when Lidge walked Jim Edmonds on five pitches, drawing manager Phil Garner from the dugout. For the first time in two years, the pressure seemed to affect Lidge.
Think back to the pitches to Edmonds. Lidge repeatedly pulled his fastball inside, a sign in baseball circles that he was gripping the ball too tightly. The subsequent plan, reading between the lines from interviews with catcher Brad Ausmus and Garner, was to throw Pujols nothing but sliders in the dirt, to see if he would chase.
That’s the one thing that separates Pujols from Barry Bonds: He can be baited into expanding his strike zone. The strategy worked on the first pitch, but backfired horribly moments later.
Ausmus and general manager Tim Purpura scoffed at the notion Pujols should have been walked, intentionally or otherwise. Their defense, a strong one, was based on an old baseball staple: Never put the tying run at second base.
“To walk Pujols there, you are setting up a potentially disastrous situation. The thing we needed to do was not walk Edmonds,” Purpura said. “That was the critical piece of the puzzle. And once that happened, you know, there’s a lot of bad things that can happen, and a bad thing did. But in my mind there’s no second-guessing.”
Lidge stood firmly behind the decision. He made a mistake, accepted it like a man. Now, he simply wants the opportunity again.
“That’s part of being a closer,” Lidge said. “You forget about it and wait for the next chance.”
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-820-5447 or trenck@denverpost.com.
