The ball sailed high into the heavy mist and the steady drizzle, winding up in the warm clutches of a fan seated somewhere in the left-field stands.
And then, one batter later, it traveled basically the same majestic course.
PHOTO: EPA
The St. Louis Cardinals have treaded this path since the beginning of the regular season, and they are wearing it out in the National League Championship Series. Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen drove in a combined 247 runs this season, the most of any duo in the major leagues, but they would surely sacrifice all of those runs batted in for two that came in the late stages Thursday night.
With the game tied and the rain streaming from the sky, Pujols led off the eighth inning with a towering drive into the left-field seats, and Rolen powered a blast into the left-center-field bleachers, the first time the Cardinals notched back-to-back postseason home runs. The twin killings beat the Houston Astros, 6-4, gave St. Louis a 2-0 lead in this best-of-seven-game series, and victimized middle relief pitcher Dan Miceli while closer Brad Lidge waited in the bullpen.
At Busch Stadium, it seems nothing can cool off the Cardinals, and nothing can chill them out.
"We really needed to do this tonight to feel comfortable," Pujols said "Everybody tries to be a hero, but you don't really have to be a hero on this team."
Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg said, "I don't think we feel intimidated or down. We're just in a bad spot. But we've been playing four months in a bad spot, so we're in a familiar area."
With fireworks exploding over the Mississippi River in the seventh inning, Houston finally took advantage of a scoring chance and tied the game, 4-4.
Since no one on the Astros seemed capable of moving a runner from second base, Lance Berkman, who had doubled to left-center with no one out, stole third base and Ensberg singled him home to regain some semblance of the momentum lost when the Cardinals overcame a 3-0 Houston lead.
The Cardinals threw a six-run sixth inning at the Astros to take the lead in Game 1 and a four-run fifth inning to grab the edge in Game 2. Rolen, who started the postseason 0 for 14, had the game-tying single on Wednesday and the go-ahead homer on Thursday, a two-run shot over the left-field fence.
"The guys said to me, `It's about time. Where have you been,'" Rolen said. "Sometimes, you just need a little taste of success for confidence to take over."
St. Louis went into the fifth behind, 3-0, but the Astros failed to turn a key double play to get out of the inning, and that brought up Larry Walker with two outs.
Walker, who was born in British Columbia and has played some of his best games in nasty weather, lined a two-run homer to right that rattled Houston's starting pitcher, Pete Munro, for the first time.
Munro, a New Yorker from Flushing, Queens, started this season with the Minnesota Twins' Class AAA team and was asked earlier in the week if he would be nervous about Thursday's start. He responded, "I would say so."
Brad Ausmus, the Houston catcher, checked on Munro before the game and said: "I saw him eating a sandwich earlier. He seems to be keeping his food down."
When Munro threw away a pickoff attempt in the first inning, he looked as if he might lose his sandwich, but he logged four scoreless innings and showed some serious intestinal fortitude before leaving with a 3-2 lead and two out in the fifth.
Munro appeared more composed than his counterpart, Matt Morris, a fellow New Yorker, who walked five batters in five innings, gave up homers to Carlos Beltran and Ensberg, and was in trouble every inning.
No matter what happens in the rest of this series, Beltran has already used these playoffs to establish himself as a burgeoning superstar and the most marketable free agent.
After powering a home run to right field in the first inning of Game 1, Beltran did the same in the opening inning of Game 2, piercing a steady rain for his sixth home run of the postseason, two short of the major-league record set by Barry Bonds in 2002.
Houston had scored its first nine runs of this series on homers, until Berkman's run-scoring single in the fifth, a line drive that sailed over the head of first baseman Pujols, who threw his glove at the ball and almost injured his hand in the process.
The Astros could have hurt the Cardinals even worse in the early going, but Houston stranded nine runners in the first six innings. When the Astros put two on with no outs in the sixth, Pujols charged the plate and bare-handed a sacrifice bunt attempt -- abandoning that glove -- and fired to third base for a force.
Rain soaked St. Louis for much of the afternoon, and Major League Baseball officials decided to delay the game for about a half-hour. In the regular season, the home team decides whether to call or delay a game, but in the playoffs, more is at stake.
If Houston manager Phil Garner had a rain dance in him, he probably would have done it. A rainout would have allowed Garner to start Roger Clemens in a makeup game at Busch Stadium on Friday and then use Roy Oswalt in Houston on Saturday.
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