King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The underdogs start winning, but unlike the Red Sox, the Astros actually have a chance.

Oct. 18, 2004 | That's more like it. Before the weekend I'd been hoping the underdogs would start winning games and they went out and won three out of four, with a rainout mixed in. One of the League Championship Series is even a series now.

The Astros did what they'd been hoping to do, winning two games started by their aces, Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt, to tie the NLCS with the Cardinals at two games apiece. On the American League side, the Red Sox, down 2-0, lost a disaster of a game to the Yankees Saturday, 19-8, effectively ending that series and handing the Yankees their 40th A.L. pennant.

The Red Sox staved off the inevitable Sunday with about as entertaining a game as a five-hour game can be, David Ortiz giving them the 6-4 win on a home run in the 12th off of Paul Quantrill. The real news was that the Sox scored the tying run against Mariano Rivera in the ninth, the second blown save of the postseason for the Yankees closer, the same number he'd blown in his career before this year.

Carlos Beltran drew the Astros even with the Cardinals Sunday by hitting a game-winning home run in the seventh inning off of Julian Tavarez, who had allowed one home run in 77 regular-season innings this year, though he had also given one up in Game 1 of this series Wednesday.

Tavarez, who's a hothead, jumped up and down near the mound and shouted profanities after Beltran's homer had given Houston a 6-5 lead, but really, what's a guy to do? He threw a hell of a pitch, a nasty slider down and in that not many people would have touched. Fortunately for the Astros, Beltran's not playing like a mere person. He golfed the pitch off his shoe-tops over the right-field fence.

Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to a guy. Even if your cap is filthy enough to earn you a 10-game suspension for having foreign substances on it, which happened to Tavarez this year. Hopping around probably feels better, though.

In the four games of this series Beltran is 7-for-13 with four home runs. In the nine playoff games so far, he's hitting .486 with eight home runs. His next homer -- scheduled for Monday night in Game 5 -- will set a new postseason record, with as many as nine games to play after Monday.

Beltran is a free agent after this season, and there's a lot of talk that his playoff display is really going to send his value through the roof, but is there anybody in baseball who didn't already know how good Carlos Beltran is?

Next page: Get used to the idea of Beltran in pinstripes. Plus: The Red Sox whistle through the graveyard