Astros 7, Braves 6 (Houston wins series 3-1)
Last week, I said that the Astros would beat the Braves in five games, and in the most technical sense, I was dead on the money. Sure, they only played four games, but the fourth game was exactly the length of TWO games, therefore they played five games’ worth of baseball.
For a game that lasted 18 innings, only about four or five of them were essential viewing. Lance Berkman’s Grand Slam in the eighth, that was cool. The 400 footer from Brad Ausmus (!) with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, that was really cool. Then Roger Clemens came out to pitch in relief, and that was really, really cool. The only thing that could have topped it was if Clemens had hit a home run to finish the game. And while he was certainly swinging for the fences when he batted in the 18th, he came up a little short. Luckily for him, Chris Burke had something left in the tank, and put the Braves away for good.
The Brave that will have recurring nightmares for the rest of the offseason will be Adam LaRoche, who was gunned down at the plate in the 7th after lollygagging around the bases on Frenchie Francoeur’s double. Note to all of you little league kiddies out there reading this: even when you’re up by four runs, you never let your foot up off of your opponent’s throats. You just never know what they have up their sleeves. If you’re ten runs up, maybe you stop stealing bases. If you’re four runs up, you choke them until they bleed. God knows, St. Louis won’t make that mistake with Houston in the NLCS.
