If you bought a couple of squares in your office World Series pool, and one of them was "Lance Berkman infield hit," you were probably bummed. Also, you're just making this whole thing up because there aren't office World Series pools. Well, there was an office World Series pool in 2001, but that's just where the Diamondbacks played. Now we're off track.
Point is that Berkman did lead off the bottom of the sixth inning with an infield hit, the first hit off Colby Lewis since the first inning. That brought Matt Holliday up, and hit hit a slow chopper to first. A reminder: Michael Young used to be a shortstop:
You could watch that video as is, or you could take the extra step and watch it the way nature intended.
With two on, and one out, Ron Washington went to the mound to see if his pitcher should stay in. Whatever Lewis said, it convinced Washington. It was also a big pack of lies, as a tired Lewis walked David Freese on five pitches to load the bases.
So Lewis gave way to Alexi Ogando, who walked in a run to tie the game.
Oof. It would have been interesting to see how the at-bat would have gone if the first pitch were called a strike, but the rest of them weren't even close enough to tempt Wily Mo Pena. That left the bases loaded for Nick Punto, but Matt Holliday was cut down by the golden right arm of noted defensive whiz Mike Napoli:
After Napoli let a wild pitch get by, Ogando walked Punto. After sporting a 2.3 BB/9 ratio in the regular season, Ogando has walked seven of the last 16 batters he faced. He walked seven batters in May. As a starter.
Derek Holland came in to retire Jon Jay for the final out of the inning, so the Rangers escaped with the tie. The Cardinals are probably a little disappointed that they couldn't take the lead, but then again, they didn't hit the ball out of the freaking infield.