The St. Louis Cardinals' heart-attack-inducing postseason ways continued for another night on Friday, when reserve shortstop Pete Kozma shocked the Washington Nationals' capacity crowd in Game 5 of the NLDS with a go-ahead line drive with two outs in the top of the ninth innning. Daniel Descalso, who homered to bring the Cardinals within one in the eighth, had just tied the game; Kozma untied it, completing a Cardinals comeback that started with ace Adam Wainwright allowing six runs.
The Cardinals' season, for the second year in a row, came down again to David Freese at the plate with the go-ahead run. But Nationals closer Drew Storen walked him, and Daniel Descalso, who slugged just .324 in the regular season, hit a two-RBI single through shortstop Ian Desmond to bring the game from 7-5 to 7-7.
That brought up Pete Kozma—one of the worst hitters in the Pacific Coast League, and the Cardinals' starting shortstop only because they'd dumped Tyler Greene and Rafael Furcal had gotten hurt. He took two strikes before slashing a 95-mile-an-hour sinker into right field, scoring Freese and Descalso and leaving things up to Jason Motte in the ninth inning.
The Cardinals, for at least another half-inning, have done it again. I don't know how, but they did.