Big-game pitcher hammered away
ST. LOUIS -- It was baseball the good old-fashioned way as Chris Carpenter came to bat in the bottom of the eighth.
First of all, it's always fun to employ the words "pitcher" and "bat" in the same sentence. Secondly, this was the bottom of the eighth, which indicated that Mr. Carpenter would be going out to pitch the ninth.
He got a splendid ovation from the crowd of 46,513 as he strode to the plate, and he got another splendid ovation after deftly executing a sacrifice bunt that advanced So Taguchi to scoring position.
About the only thing that went wrong was that the inning went too long. Carpenter didn't need runs. He needed outs if he was going to have that rarest of modern pitching opportunities -- a complete-game, World Series shutout.
"Clearly, he was coming out for the ninth," explained manager Tony La Russa, who elected to have Braden Looper finish the game. "But to get that extra run it must have taken 15 minutes, so we didn't want to take any chances."
"That's not my decision," said Carpenter. "I just get paid to pitch."
And the fact is you can't pitch much better in a big circumstance than he did last night. "He showed everything he had," said La Russa. "Fastball on the third-base side. Fastball on the first-base side. Good control of his curve. Some big outs with his changeup. Up and down. Everything moved. He had great command."
The final score was 5-0, but Carpenter was in complete control after a Jim Edmonds double gave him two runs to work with in the fourth. His pitch count bordered on the Madduxian. He got through the fourth on 35 pitches, the fifth on 50, the sixth on 58. His final total was 82. Pitch count wasn't the issue. The weather was.
The simple truth was that his only enemy was his own offense. The Cardinals sent seven men to bat in the seventh, when they scored two runs without a hit (the key being a Joel Zumaya throwing error that allowed two men to score). The runs were superfluous. The Tigers weren't going to do anything with Carpenter.
No one was more aware of that than Tiger manager Jim Leyland, who shrugged off a question concerning the Zumaya error and Nate Robertson's pitching. "Basically, he said, "we got three hits. We can talk about the other stuff, but, to be honest with you, we've lost three games and in one we got four hits and another three. Number 1, credit Chris Carpenter. Number 2, we've got a few guys who aren't swinging the bats well."
Carpenter is a phlegmatic New Englander, born and bred in New Hampshire. In an era of players who have mastered the art of playing without emotion, or without any concession to outside forces, Carpenter is practically Exhibit A of the type. "I'm just trying to execute a game plan and execute my pitches," he declared.
He doesn't seem very big on talking about himself, but, fortunately for us, his manager has no reluctance to do so. La Russa has been around a lot of great pitchers, but it sounds as if this guy could be earning a place in his inner circle.
"The best compliment I can give him is that we've been looking at this for the last three years," La Russa said. "He's so strong between the ears. Nothing fazes him. Besides his great talent, he's got a great heart and head."
"He got strike one a lot," said Edmonds. "He moved the ball around. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes, and he never gets rattled. It's amazing to watch he and [catcher] Yaddy [Molina] work together. He never looks up. He just puts his head down and he and Yaddy go to town."
Carpenter won the Cy Young Award in 2005 and he will finish somewhere in the top three this year. He has become a rather classic ace-of-a-staff sort.
"Our club comes to the park the day he pitches with great expectations," La Russa said. "That's a heckuva burden. Those aces have a lot to live up to."
There are never any secrets in the World Series. The team that pitches better wins about 99.999 percent of the time (1960 being the one glaring exception), and despite all the publicity surrounding Detroit's staff, the Cardinals are the team whose pitchers are living up to their own reputation. "Jeff Weaver's found himself," said Leyland, "Jeff Suppan's been tremendous and Chris Carpenter's always tremendous."
Since losing by a 12-5 score in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series, the Cardinals have gotten strong performances from every starting pitcher, win or lose. Carpenter was indeed a loser in Game 6 of the NLCS, but not because he was knocked around.
Last night he was in complete command. "I had a breaking ball that got better and better as the game went on," he explained. "I only left a few balls over the plate, and one of them turned into an out [a Magglio Ordonez lineout]." Sean Casey had two of the three Detroit hits, but they were among the very few Detroit swings to produce anything close to positive results.
Leyland knows what he's looking at. "We're down, 2 to 1," he said, "and if we don't start swinging the bats better, we'll be down 3 to 1."
Tonight they'll at least have a chance. They won't have to face Chris Carpenter.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com. 
