Cardinals vs. Phillies - National League Championship Series: Part 2
Having established a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five games, the Phillies proceeded with ever more care. It is important to recall that the Phillies had won more than 100 games in the season when it got into the National League Championship Series.
The Game 4, however, had to belong to the Cardinals. This time the pitchers did their bit too. Much as the Cardinals offence deserved compliment for an extraordinarily great show, the pitchers had their instrumentality that no one could deny.
The Cardinals won the game by 5-3 with Edward Jackson pitching some of the best 6 innings in the Series. He barely gave up 5 hits, allowing only 2 runs with 3.00 ERA compared to that of Roy Oswalt of the Phillies who gave up 5 runs with a 7.50 ERA.
With the stunning victory that the Cardinals scored here, levelling the Series 2-2, after the Phillies had secured a 2-1 lead, the Cardinals looked at Chris Carpenter to do what the team wanted: Absolute victory.
Chris Carpenter would not disappoint the team. Faced with Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies, Carpenter was engaged in a duel that had the attention of the ever expanding baseball circle.
With 102 wins that the Phillies had to their credit, the game saw Halladay and Carpenter doing their best to outrival the hitters. In the end, the result would go to the most assertive and effective player, Chris Carpenter.
The Philadelphia Phillies were said to be destined to win the World Series title this year. However, they might not have expected an unusual obstruction in the form of Chris Carpenter when Game 5 began.
As the Cardinals had secured a victory in the 4th Game, all eyes were on Carpenter. Like said earlier, the pitching combination had to do the ultimate for both the teams at the end. As the game commenced, Carpenter tossed some of the best pitches
of his career.
Going hard against the hitters of the Philadelphia Phillies, he hardly allowed any hit, let alone run. Roy Halladay, on the other hand, could not stop Rafael Furcal who led off with a triple in the very first inning to score the only run for the Cardinals.
Carpenter did not allow a run, pitching a complete shutout to win the game and the series for the Cardinals.
“Roy Halladay is, at this time, probably the best pitcher in the game and we were able to go out and jump ahead, which was huge,” Carpenter said.
“I think guys we're just relaxed and having fun," Carpenter added. “We put ourselves into position where everybody was expecting us to have no chance and we just started playing like the team we knew we were. And we were fortunate to get some help back into
it with Atlanta losing and we were playing well the rest of that month.”
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