Astros should have never let Pujols get to the plate

	Albert Pujols was 0-for-4 before silencing 43,000 Astros fans with one gigantic swing. Elsa/Getty Images
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HOUSTON -- The last person the Astros wanted at the plate Monday night with a chance to beat them -- the one player they could least afford to let anywhere near the plate in a critical situation -- was Albert Pujols.

And yet there was Pujols, in the batter's box with two outs in the top of the ninth. And there he was taking a mighty swing at a mighty fat pitch. And there was the ball flying deep to left-center field off the Astros' best reliever.

And suddenly there were 43,000 hoarse Houston revelers, interrupted in mid-revel.

One strike away from the first World Series in the history of the franchise, the Astros did the absolutely unthinkable in letting Pujols, maybe the best player in baseball, beat them in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series with a monstrous three-run home run. And now everybody has to go back to St. Louis for Game 6 on Wednesday, a situation that strikes eerily close to last postseason, when the Cardinals, down by this same 3-2 margin in the best-of-seven series, won the final two games of the NLCS in St. Louis.

The Astros never, ever, ever should have let this thing get this far.

"You give someone like that an opportunity like that, he's going to hurt you," said the Cardinals' Larry Walker, who already had accepted a few pats on the back in the dugout for a career that, it seemed, had ended. "He's too good."

Everyone in Houston's Minute Maid Park -- and a lot more people in living rooms around the world -- knew that the Astros couldn't let Pujols get to the plate in the top of the ninth. And, really, there was no reason to think that he would. Pujols, the Cardinals' slugging first baseman, was due up fifth. And the Astros had Brad Lidge, their stud closer, on the mound.

Lidge did his thing at first, striking out pinch hitters John Rodriguez and John Mabry to start the inning. In the Houston dugout, players exchanged high-fives and did little dances, all noted by the Cardinals.

Lidge got two strikes on the next batter, leadoff man David Eckstein. But Eckstein pulled a pitch through the left side of the infield for a single, past a diving Morgan Ensberg.

Then Lidge, finally starting to show some cracks, did the second-worst thing he did all night -- he walked the next batter, center fielder Jim Edmonds, on five pitches.

"You have to let Edmonds hit the ball," said Astros manager Phil Garner. "You can't walk him and [catcher] Brad [Ausmus] knows that ... and that was a mistake."

Pujols, 0-for-4 to that point with a strikeout and three infield outs, walked to the plate with two men on and his team trailing 4-2. He swung through a slider in the dirt. The crowd hit a record for raucousness. In the Cardinals' dugout, Walker turned to a couple of teammates, looked up at the train over the left-field wall and joked, "Hit the train for a million dollars."

And then Pujols swung again.

"I've never heard 43,000 people just shut up like that," Walker said afterward. "The noise just ... wasn't there."

Lidge inexplicably left a slider over the plate, Pujols connected solidly and the ball took a no-doubt-about-it path over the stands in left, an estimated 412 feet away. You could practically hear every one of Pujols' steps as he rounded the bases.

"All I felt was me running," said Pujols, the likely NL MVP this season. "I would say it was the best base hit I ever got in my career. It doesn't get any better."

Lidge struck out the next batter, but the Astros, almost predictably, went 1-2-3 in the bottom of the ninth.

The Astros are not dead in this NLCS, not by a long shot. They still lead the series, which gives them two chances to win one game. They still have two of the game's best pitchers, Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt, ready for the next two games. The odds, if you believe in such things, still might be on the Astros' side.

But Monday was a game that they had won, a game they should have won, a game that they literally threw away by giving the best player on the other team -- some would say the best player on any team -- a fat pitch to hit in a critical situation.

It's a mistake that, potentially, could haunt this franchise for years to come.

"I hit it, and I was like 'Wow. I can't believe I did it,'" Pujols said.

Nobody could. Nobody could believe he got the chance.