Whether it was the sellout crowd of 42,659. fans who jammed the ballpark specifically to cheer for their red hot Astros, or Craig Biggio?s first pitch homerun that handed him with a 1-0 lead, Wandy Rodriguez pitched this game with confidence.
Wandy went 6 innings, gave up 2 runs and 4 hits. Working his prescription of curve and especially change to good effect, Rodriguez induced groundballs and lazy flies. A couple of the groundballs worked through the infield but the only hard hit off him was Miguel Cairo?s double in the 5th.
Meanwhile the Astros continued their homerun extravaganza. In the 3rd Elvis hit a two run bomb, right to the Conoco sign above the 410 mark. 3-0 Astros.
But Rodriguez?s control abandoned him in the 6th. After two walks he was looking at runners 1st and 2nd, one out. After a gimme steal of third, Garner said later that they hadn?t intended to contest it, prefering to keep Ensberg back, the steM got a run on a sac fly. Then Floyd, atoning for his zoning out on the steal of third, took second. The low throw from Q skipped into center and the runner advanced to third. This was costly as he probably couldn?t have scored from second on Piazza?s subsequent short dump to center.
The Astros answered this scratching and clawing immediately in the bottom of the 6th with a 2 run blast from MoBerg. They had another chance to score in the inning, however Maximus was thrown out at the plate trying to score from second on an Opie single to left. Floyd made a one hop throw right on the money and Piazza blocked the plate and made a good catch on a bang bang play. 5-2 Astros.
And that was it for the scoring. Qualls came for the 7th and 8th, slider looked good. Lidge, and Ausmus came in for the 9th and shut the Mets down.
For such a packed crowd and the chance to take the lead in the Wild Card, this was an oddly tensionless game. At one point, Greg Lucas, revealing entirely too much about himself, taunted Bill Brown with Ed Wood trivia. Is that fair?
6:05 , Pettitte v. Glavine, the Whiner.
