It looks like the media can stop worrying about Albert Pujols’s failure to appear after the St. Louis Cardinals lost Game 2 of the 2011 World Series, because he’s shown up in Game 3: Pujols has homered in consecutive at-bats, driving in five runs and pushing the Cardinals’ lead over the Texas Rangers in this wild game to 14-7 through seven innings.

Pujols’s first home run, off Alexi Ogando, was a cannon-shot down the left field line, bouncing off the upper deck facade and going an estimated 423 feet. Against Mike Gonzalez an inning later Pujols hit a 400-footer to dead center field, putting two more runs on the board. The home runs are his third and fourth of the postseason and his 16th and 17th of his postseason career.

The Cardinals nearly lost two separate five-run leads before building their current one. Both teams worried audibly about the hitting environment at the Ballpark in Arlington, and through one game it would appear that all of that innuendo was totally justified. Expect more runs.