Hopeful Cardinals fans witnessed a sight that should present more hope for their scrappy bunch of ballplayers. The Milwaukee Brewers came to St. Louis looking to stretch their lead in the Wild Card race, while the Cardinals were looking to the exact opposite.

With a 12-0 victory for the Beer Men, the Cardinals looked like a cellar dwelling team, instead of a lively ball club fighting for a playoff berth. Resiliency has been one term that the Cardinals could use about this season. They’ve always had resiliency. Not going on long losing skids that would resemble the 2006 campaign. Although, we all know what happened in ’06.

In the second of a two game series, St. Louis was trailing 3-0 going into the bottom of the 6th-inning, when Ryan Ludwick blasted his 32nd homer on the year, cutting the lead to 3-1. Kyle McClellan and Ryan Franklin teamed up to pitch scoreless 7th and 8th-innings respectively. After Franklin finished his inning on the mound, the Cardinals came to bat, but with a little more fire than usual. At the end of the 7th, relief pitcher, Carlos Villanueva got out of the inning, and began yelling towards the St. Louis dugout. Pujols, the on deck batter, walked towards Villanueva as he was walking off the mound toward the visiting dugout. Pujols and Villanueva jawed back and forth for about a minute, with homeplate umpire, Phil Cuzzi trying to keep Pujols from going after the right-handed reliever.

Unfortunately, for David Riske, Villanueva got him into trouble. “He woke a sleeping bear” Pujols said. Riske back-to-back doubles, to Pujols and Ludwick, Ludwicks being the latter, also driving in a run. Troy Glaus came to the plate and singled to beat the shift the Milwaukee defense had set for him, plating Ludwick to tie the game at 3. Good baserunning allowed the Cardinals to score the go-ahead run as Glaus took second base on the throw from Mike Cameron to try to cut down Ryan Ludwick at the plate. Yadier Molina did his job, grounding out to the right side, allowing Glaus to advance to third on the play.

Brewers manager, Ned Yost, was playing a matchup as he brought in Brian Shouse to face Skip Schumaker to create a lefty-on-lefty matchup. LaRussa quickly countered with switch-hitting Aaron Miles as a pinch-hitter. Miles hit a groundball to shorstop, J.J. Hardy, in which Troy Glaus bolted home on contact, and with a smart slide was able to avoid the tag of Jason Kendall to give the Cardinals the lead on the fielder’s choice. After a sac-bunt from Braden Looper, Felipe Lopez singled and Miles scored to make the score 5-3 in favor of the Redbirds.

Rookie “closer” Chris Perez took the ball from Tony LaRussa in the top of the 9th-inning, pitching a solid inning. He gave up one hit in the inning, a double to J.J. Hardy, but he fanned the other three batters he faced in the inning. One being his old college teammate, Ryan Braun. Braun battled him nicely, but Perez threw a slider that fooled Braun badly, and sent him back to the bench with his 110th strikeout of the year. Perez blew Prince Fielder away with 94 mph gas to strike him out and end the game.

St. Louis has moved within 3.5 games back of the Brewers for the Wild Card and head into Houston on Firday to wrap up the month of August. Another three games in Arizona to start September, and the Cardinals are back home in St. Louis to take on the Florida Marlins. The Brewers play Pittsburgh for three games, then take on the Mets at home for three. We’ll see if the Cardinals can gain any ground in the Wild Card over the next week.