David Freese drove in four runs with a homer and a double on Wednesday as St Louis beat Philadelphia 5-3 to stay alive in the first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs.
With the victory, the upstart Cardinals knotted their best-of-five National League Division Series with the Phillies at two games apiece.
The Arizona Diamondbacks also forced a Game 5, downing Milwaukee 10-6 in Phoenix, Arizona, to level their National League Division Series at two games each.
Photo: AFP
Arizona’s Ryan Roberts hit a Grand Slam and Chris Young had the first two-homer game in the Diamondbacks’ postseason history to extend the series.
The Diamondbacks had been out-scored 13-5 in dropping the first two games of their series in Milwaukee.
However, Arizona bounced back at home to give themselves a chance to become just the eighth team to win a best-of-five series after trailing 0-2.
Game 5 is today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“We had confidence all year, we had confidence when we were down 0-2,” Roberts said. “Anything can happen, that’s why you play this set of five.”
Roberts’ Grand Slam and Young’s first home run of the night accounted for Arizona’s five runs in the first inning.
Aaron Hill also homered for Arizona in the sixth, and Young belted a two-run homer in the seventh.
Milwaukee’s Carlos Gomez hit a two-run homer in the eighth to trim the Diamondbacks’ lead to 10-6, but it was too late for the Brewers.
“We’re not going to give up, even when we’re down 2-0,” Young said. “In the clubhouse, we still believed we could do it. At the time, our goal was to get back to Milwaukee.”
“We’ve reached that, so it’s a toss-up now. We’re going to be ready to go,” Young said.
In St Louis, Missouri, Cardinals pitcher Edwin Jackson settled down after some rough early going and pitched six solid innings in his first postseason start.
Relief pitcher Jason Motte worked a perfect ninth for his second save of the series.
Jackson gave up a triple, a double and a single in the first inning, but the Cardinals escaped the frame having surrendered just two runs.
Lance Berkman then doubled in a run in the bottom of the first to narrow the gap to 2-1.
St Louis seized the lead in the fourth after Phillies starter Roy Oswalt walked Berkman to open the inning then hit Matt Holliday to send him to first.
With one out, Freese’s double scored both to give St Louis a 3-2 lead. Two innings later, Freese added a towering two-run homer to put the Cardinals up 5-2.
“This is what you worked for,” said Freese, who was a high school stand-out in St Louis and was acquired by the Cardinals after the 2007 season. “Just to do this in front of the fans of St Louis and a bunch of friends and family, it’s amazing.”
The Phillies pulled back one run in the eighth, but couldn’t get any closer.
The deciding fifth game will be in Philadelphia today when the Phillies will send Game 1 winner Roy Halladay to the mound against Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter.
“They’re good friends and old teammates, and Carp was really chomping at the bit for this opportunity to pitch against Roy on full rest in a huge Game 5,” St Louis outfielder Matt Holliday said. “It should be quite a battle and then it’ll be fun to watch two great competitors go head to head and two great teams get after it.”
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