Homer History: When Albert Pujols silenced Minute Maid Park

In our Homer History series, writers re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. In this installment, Yahoo Sports’ MLB columnist Jeff Passan recalls the scene in Houston after Albert Pujols’ ninth-inning homer in Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS.

I didn’t think life had a mute button until Oct. 17, 2005. It was loud inside Minute Maid Park, the sort of loud fueled by desperation and want and booze and emotion and fear and everything else that turns sporting venues febrile. They’d waited forever for this, and the only thing standing between the Houston Astros and their first World Series was the best hitter in the world.

Silence took four seconds to permeate Minute Maid, and in that time, as the ball flew at an inconceivable speed and trajectory even to a city famous for real moonshots, there was denial and anger and bargaining and depression and, ultimately, acceptance. Because what they’d just seen – what Albert Pujols and Brad Lidge conspired to create – was a home run like few before or since.

(Yahoo Sports / AP) It came off the bat at 117 mph and would have landed 470 feet away had architectural gluttony not had its way. Instead, it clanged off the back of the domed stadium, caromed onto the train tracks high above the field and was still bouncing when the TV cameras cut to the diamond, where Lidge sat in a squat of shame, his back to the carnage, and Pujols rounded the bases, his deed done. When he touched home plate, the scoreboard read Cardinals 5, Astros 4.

And then it was quiet. Maybe not pin-drop quiet, but church-on-a-holiday quiet, with a few who don’t understand what’s happening asking aloud and those who do but can’t process it reduced to braying and a couple inappropriate claps interrupting the mourning. Most of the 43,470 at Minute Maid just sat mouths agape or hands on head, hushed like a dog in a shock collar.

[Elsewhere: Check out the Dunk History series from Yahoo Sports]

Upon further review, it’s every bit as magnificent of a moment as it was then. I’ve watched it again and again, curious if the TV and radio broadcasts match my memory of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. Never have I heard a stadium go so silent in the decade since. I hope I never do, either.

Only someone cruel would wish what happened to the Astros that day on another fan base. As fascinating as it was – as much as the moment booked a permanent place in baseball’s pantheon – the heartache of such moments always exceeds the joy. It’s what makes sports fandom so unappealing to me. It’s not just that my job keeps me from rooting; it’s my aversion to masochism.

(AP) I saw Lidge about an hour later, still standing in the Astros’ clubhouse, still taking questions, the same questions he had taken probably a half-dozen times as different waves of media streamed in and out trying to figure out what went wrong. Lidge was the most dominant relief pitcher in the NL, his slider among the game’s filthiest. After striking out the first two hitters of the inning, Lidge let David Eckstein scrap a two-strike single to left field, followed by walking Jim Edmonds and invited Pujols to the plate.

It’s easy these days to forget just how good Pujols’ first five seasons really were. He batted .332 – higher than Tony Gwynn or Ichiro’s initial half-decade. Only 10 hitters got on base at a higher clip than his .416. Eight are in the Hall of Fame. Just four hitters beat his .622 slugging percentage: Ted Williams, Chuck Klein, Joe DiMaggio and Todd Helton. Pujols vs. Lidge was the best vs. the best. Anything but spectacular would’ve been a letdown.

Instead, this. The immediacy with which Lidge recoiled at the slider that mutinied on the way to the plate. The pimp walk Pujols fashioned before his first step hits the ground. And the empathy I felt from having grown up in Cleveland and known the feeling of a sporting gut punch.

I’ve seen some famous home runs in person. David Ortiz’s cop slam. David Freese’s walk-off. The magnitude of both exceeded Pujols’, because the Red Sox and Cardinals went on to win the World Series, whereas the Astros shook off the cobwebs from their Game 5 loss to clinch the pennant in Game 6 and get to that coveted World Series.

And yet all these years later, it’s the one that sticks out, perhaps because of the vacuum that followed it. Fenway Park rollicked at Ortiz’s and Busch Stadium feted Freese’s. Disbelief paralyzed Minute Maid, not just at the scoreboard but the scale of what just happened. All of last season, one home run was hit at least 117 mph – Giancarlo Stanton’s 479-foot paroxysm off a hanging slider from Cardinals starter Carlos Martinez. Not only did Pujols birth a unicorn, he did so representing the final out of the entire season.

(AP) Following the game, I remember talking with a friend and trying to figure out how long it would’ve gone without the Minute Main window. At least 475 feet. Or even 500. In the afterglow, 550 didn’t seem all that far-fetched. Rare is the sporting feat that causes the unlikely combination of immediate reflection and willful hyperbole.

[Elsewhere: A-Rod is approaching Babe Ruth’s homer mark, calls it overwhelming]

It’s the same reason people want to believe the home run ruined Lidge; it would take on even more mythical proportions as a career killer. The temptation to exaggerate is so strong that it forgets the dominant 2008 Lidge capped with a fourth-place Cy Young finish and a World Series ring on his finger. Ruin him? Hardly. It just affixed itself to him.

“I don’t want my career to be defined by one pitch,” he told me during the playoff run with Philadelphia in ’08, and it’s not so much that the Pujols home run will define his career. Brad Lidge was great most days. He happened to play mortal on the wrong one.

Albert Pujols managed that often, turning deities back into men, overachievers into punks. The best hitter in the world did what the best hitter in the world was supposed to do that night. He walked to the batter’s box 0 for 4 with five men left on base and exited it 1 for 5 with one stadium left on mute.

COMING FRIDAY: Bill Mazeroski’s World Series-winning walk-off homer in 1960, as remembered by Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports.

PREVIOUSLY IN HOMER HISTORY
– The night a hobbled Kirk Gibson broke my heart
– Cal Ripken Jr. wowed us yet again on Iron Man night

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