Houston Astros: Five most devastating series in Astros history

Jim F***ing Edmonds – 2004 NLCS

The Astros and St. Louis Cardinals played one of the best series ever played in post season history. And no one seems to remember outside of Astros and Cardinals fans. The reason is because that is the same year the Boston Red Sox reversed the curse of the Bambino against the New York Yankees, becoming the only team in Major League history to erase a 3-0 series deficit and going on to win their first World Series since 1918.

But hey, our series wasn’t anything to sneeze at. The Cardinals and Astros tallied 65 runs in seven games providing plenty of offensive firepower along the way as they combined to hit 25 home runs in those seven games.

And remember, this was also the year Carlos Beltran was super man hitting a post season record eight home runs (four of which came in this series.)

The Astros were really unfortunate going into the 2004 NLCS as they were missing one of their big three starting pitchers to injury in Andy Pettite. On top of which their rotation wasn’t set up well since the previous series with the Atlanta Braves went the full five games.  Our starters in games 1 and 2 of this series were Brandon Backe and Pete Munro. This all while Roy Oswalt and Roger Clemens were sitting on the bench. Backe and Munro got four starts in this series. Oswalt and Clemens got three. No good.

There were a lot of swings of momentum as the home team never lost a game. It felt like the Cardinals were gonna roll after winning games one and two. Then the Astros came back and won three straight at home, including that phenomenal game five where Brandon Backe and Woody Williams went toe to toe in a magnificent pitchers duel, with Backe taking a perfect game into the fifth inning.

Game five was the highlight of the series for Astros fans as in the bottom of the 9th in a tied scoreless ball game, Jeff Kent hit a walk-off three run homer to give the Astros a 3-2 series lead. I still remember Kent as he approached the mob waiting for him at home plate holding up one finger and saying “One more, one more.” as all we needed was one more game to get to our first ever World Series.

There were a lot of swings of momentum as the home team never lost a game.

What’s forgotten about that at bat is that the Cardinals intentionally walked Lance Berkman to get to Jeff Kent since they had a base open and they wanted the righty on righty matchup with Jason Isringhausen on the mound. It definitely didn’t work out.

But then game six happened where the Astros rallied in the ninth inning on a Bagwell single to tie the game and things felt good going into extra innings. And then they felt not so good when Jim Edmonds hit a walk-off home run to send us to game seven.

And as if Edmonds hadn’t caused enough emotional distress, he then robs Brad Ausmus of a sure double that would have scored two runs to give the Astros a 3-0 lead in the second inning of game seven. Instead the Astros retained their 1-0 lead and the game remained tight until a Scott Rolen homer in the sixth took all the air out of the Astros sails.

The Astros would get revenge the following year beating the Cardinals in the 2005 NLCS, but even the memory of our first trip to a World Series is tainted, as the most memorable moment was the mental destruction of Brad Lidge with that game five Albert Pujols home run. Lidge was not the same for a while after that and only regained his luster years later with the Phillies on THEIR way to a championship title. Ugh.