Backe flirts with history in Astros' Game 5 win

HOUSTON (AP) -- Brandon Backe was almost perfect, the most improbable postseason hero for the most unlikely playoff team.

Now Backe and the Houston Astros are a win away from an incredible upset.

Backe's one-hitter in a career-high eight innings and Jeff Kent's three-run homer in the ninth sent the Astros to their third straight win in the NL championship series Monday night, 3-0 over the St. Louis Cardinals.

Houston now holds a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series, and needs only one more win for the franchise's first World Series appearance in 43 years of existence.

Thing is, the Astros wouldn't even be here if not for the 26-year-old Galveston native, who dreamed of taking the mound for his favorite childhood team on nights like this.

"I can't really describe what happened out there tonight," he said. "When you feel as good as I did out there and felt in the rhythm that I was in, you just feel like nobody can hit you."

Only one person in St. Louis' powerful lineup did: No. 7 hitter Tony Womack.

Backe outdueled St. Louis' Woody Williams in the greatest game of his career, making a run at history by taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning before allowing the single. He left the game after the eighth, handing the ball to closer Brad Lidge with a scoreless tie.

Lidge got three quick outs, and Kent sent Jason Isringhausen's pitch deep to left in the bottom half of the inning for the win.

None of it would have been possible without Backe.

"Backe did a phenomenal job," Kent said. "He's able to keep himself focused. He's not caught up in the hype of the playoffs."

After the right-hander retired his first 13 batters, he walked Jim Edmonds with a pitch in the fifth. Backe still didn't allow a hit until his 78th pitch, when Womack sent a grounder through the gap between first and second.

The crowd groaned, but gave him a spirited standing ovation before he took the mound again to face Larry Walker.

Backe walked him on the next at-bat, prompting a brief huddle on the mound with pitching coach Jim Hickey and catcher Brad Ausmus.

"I was concerned as we got deeper in the game and the crowd kept getting into it more and more," Astros manager Phil Garner said. "When he gave up the hit, I was concerned. Sometimes hitting can turn into a frenzy when something like that happens."

But showing poise uncommon for someone new to the pressures of October, Backe retired the next seven batters to complete only the third postseason start of his career.

Once it was over, he pumped his fist and shouted as he sprinted from the mound to the dugout.

Mostly a reliever in the past, he emerged as the Astros' third starting pitcher in late August after spending two months with Triple A New Orleans.

The minor leagues never seemed so far away.

In two weeks, Backe pitched the Astros to a wild-card berth with a clutch performance in the regular-season finale, won the first postseason start of his career in Game 3 of the division series against Atlanta, and now has put Houston one win away from its first NL pennant.

Backe has become something of a Houston fan favorite, an excitable guy from a nearby coastal city who is incredibly demonstrative on the mound.

"I have a lot of energy and it's obvious to everybody," Backe said. "I kind of fall back on the crowd, to tell you the truth. They help me out, keep me going."

Fans started chanting "Back-e, Back-e" in the fifth and got much louder in the sixth, as Backe continued to dazzle them.

However, the most noise probably came from Sec. 122 of Minute Maid Park.

Wearing a red No. 41 T-shirt, clutching a rally towel in one hand and a beer in the other, Harold Backe was a bundle of nerves during his son's special night. He stood throughout much of the night, holding a homemade sign that read: "Backe Bee Hot Today."

"I'm so strung out, I can barely control myself," he said. "Brandon and I are connected -- I can't explain it. This is exactly what I expected him to do."