LOS ANGELES — The failures of October, coming as they do on baseball's central stage, are often burnished for years on the psyche of players and the consciousness of fans. For the unfortunate few, they remain there for careers and beyond.
The great ghosts do not easily go away.
The St. Louis Cardinals know this well. After collapsing last year on the brink of the World Series, they need no reminders that the commanding three-games-to-one lead they took in the National League Championship Series on Tuesday night with a 4-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers may not be so commanding after all.
So when Trevor Rosenthal struck out Juan Uribe for the final out, the Cardinals celebrated as modestly as if it were a hard-fought victory in the middle of the summer. A few fist pumps, handshakes all around, and little more.
The Cardinals know that the next win will be the hardest, and not just because it will have to come against either Zack Greinke in Game 5 on Wednesday afternoon, or Clayton Kershaw on Friday in St. Louis, two of baseball's top pitchers.
"We certainly don't talk about wonderful positions," Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny said. "What we talk about is we've got a game to play tomorrow. When we start talking about where the series is, I think it's a distraction."
A night after making so many uncharacteristic blunders — running into a double play, letting balls drop in the outfield — the Cardinals played up to their reputation as one of baseball's headier teams.
Shortstop Pete Kozma, who had been benched for his hitting but entered in the sixth as a defensive replacement, went deep in the hole to start a critical double play in the sixth and an inning later sneaked behind Nick Punto to pick him off second.
But the key blow for the Cardinals was delivered by Matt Holliday, which was poetically redemptive.
His towering two-run homer, which capped a three-run third and gave St. Louis a lead it would not relinquish, snapped an 0-for-14 streak and came on the same field where four years ago Holliday dropped a liner in left field with two outs in the ninth inning. That mistake set the stage for the Dodgers to steal Game 2 of the 2009 division series, which they went on to sweep.
Winning the World Series two years later eased that disappointment for Holliday, but for most of this year's club, the memory of last season's collapse is still real. The Cardinals jumped to a 3-1 N.L.C.S. lead over the eventual World Series champion San Francisco Giants, only to watch it vanish when they struggled to hit, scoring one run in the final three games.
"All of a sudden, we had a full turnaround in momentum," Matheny said when the team arrived here Sunday. "I don't think guys will ever forget that, of being that close and then watching it slip away."
While much has been made of the Cardinals' stable of young, powerful arms, they seemed at risk of being undone the same way they were last October.
They entered Tuesday with only two starting position players — Yadier Molina and Matt Adams — batting higher than .207 in the playoffs. In the first three games of this series, they had just 13 hits in 30 innings and 10 of those were singles. The home run by Holliday was the Cardinals' first of the series. The four runs St. Louis scored equaled its total of the first three games.
"Runs are at a premium in the postseason," Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter said. "It's hard to score, it's hard to get hits, it's hard to have a big inning, as you can see. We have one of the best offenses in baseball and we've struggled to score runs."
That was why the blast from Holliday was so welcome.
It came after Carpenter's double drove in Daniel Descalso, who started for Kozma to get a better bat in the lineup. Holliday belted a fastball that Ricky Nolasco left up and in the middle of the plate. The drive went over the Dodgers' bullpen, a 426-foot shot and suddenly an offense that had not scored an earned run in 20 innings held a 3-0 lead.
It looked like they would need more when the Dodgers bounced back in the fourth. Yasiel Puig, who was hitless in his first 11 at-bats in the series, had irritated the Cardinals by flipping his bat after hitting what he thought was a home run in Game 3. As it turned out, the ball hit just below the top of the fence and Puig raced to third, where he celebrated again, waving his arms enthusiastically.
Adam Wainwright, the losing pitcher in Game 3, dismissed the enthusiasm of Puig — and similar demonstrations by Adrian Gonzalez — as Mickey Mouse antics.
Puig once again stirred the pot Tuesday. After Gonzalez doubled and Andre Ethier walked, Lynn delivered a first-pitch fastball under Puig's chin. It spun him around and elicited a glare directed at Lynn.
Puig had the last word when he grounded a full-count breaking ball up the middle to score Gonzalez. The Dodgers closed to 3-2 when A. J. Ellis singled home Ethier. But Lynn escaped when Skip Schumaker, the former Cardinal pinch-hitting for Nolasco, grounded into a double play.
Shane Robinson's pinch-hit solo homer, which bounced off the top of the left-field wall in the seventh, provided a comfort margin for the Cardinals.
If the Dodgers are to send the series back to St. Louis, it may have to be without Hanley Ramirez. He took a painkilling injection for a fractured rib Monday and contributed two hits and a dose of inspiration in the Dodgers' 3-0 win. But after striking out three times, he was replaced in the seventh inning by Punto. His status is uncertain.
"He was having a little more trouble today as the game went on," Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said. "We'll try it again tomorrow."
Punto provided a spark for the Dodgers, doubling to the left-center alley in the seventh. But the boost was short-lived: Punto was immediately picked off.
It was one of several squandered opportunities for the Dodgers. They left the bases loaded in the second and grounded into three double plays, including one by Puig in the ninth that took the life out of a potential rally.
It did not, however, provide too much relief for the Cardinals. They will need one more win for that.
"You don't want to have that feeling again of being up 3-1 and losing three games in a row when you're so close to getting there," Descalso said. "We're happy with the win tonight, but now we've got to focus on tomorrow."
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