St. Louis’ Win a Real Corker

Standing on a folding chair in a raucous clubhouse, Albert Pujols sprayed champagne in every direction. Teammates got soaked -- owners too. No one was immune.

The tension from Chris Carpenter’s shaky beginning, the angst of the St. Louis Cardinals’ late-season swoon, all had evaporated. They’re going to the NL Championship Series for the third straight season.

“From day one, I kept saying this team’s got what it takes to get to the World Series,” Scott Spiezio said. “We’re a step closer.”

Carpenter recovered from a bad first inning to gain his second victory of the series, Juan Encarnacion hit a tiebreaking triple and the Cardinals beat the San Diego Padres, 6-2, Sunday night to win their best-of-five first-round NL Division Series, 3-1.

St. Louis nearly wasted a seven-game lead in the final two weeks of the regular season but rebounded against the Padres, a team the Cardinals swept in the first round in 2005.

Escaping trouble in each of the last two innings, the Cardinals secured the win when Adam Wainwright got Dave Roberts on a groundout with two on. Pujols stepped on first base for the final out to set off the first postseason celebration at new Busch Stadium, which opened this year.

“I didn’t blame anybody who didn’t think we had a very good shot,” said Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa, who improved to 20-5 in division series. “I’m so pleased because it’s been such a rough year. We’ve popped champagne twice, and the goal is to pop it four times.”

The Cardinals -- who lost to Boston in the 2004 World Series and to Houston in the 2005 NLCS -- open the next round Wednesday night in New York against the Mets, who won the season series from St. Louis, 4-2.

San Diego Manager Bruce Bochy, whose team won the NL West for the second straight year, dropped to 1-9 in the postseason against the Cardinals, who also swept the Padres in the opening round in 1996. San Diego was two for 32 (.063) with runners in scoring position in the series.

“This was a pretty good year,” Bochy said. “Sure, it’s disappointing the way it ended. We didn’t score a lot of runs in the series, and that was the difference.”

Carpenter, who won Tuesday’s opener, 5-1, fell behind, 2-0, in the first inning when he walked Russell Branyan with the bases loaded and Mike Cameron followed two pitches later with a run-scoring forceout.

But that was all the Padres would get against Carpenter. He got Josh Barfield to hit into an inning-ending forceout.

Carpenter followed with six innings of five-hit shutout ball, leaving him at 2-0 with a 2.02 earned-run average in the series and 4-0 with a 2.10 ERA in five postseason starts.

Ronnie Belliard’s two-run single got St. Louis even in the bottom of the first, and Encarnacion’s run-scoring triple, a run-scoring single by Spiezio and David Eckstein’s squeeze bunt keyed the decisive four-run sixth.

Because La Russa pitched him Sunday instead of saving him for a possible fifth game, Carpenter probably won’t be available until the third game of the NLCS.

San Diego held back ace Jake Peavy for a possible Game 5, which would have been today in San Diego. Woody Williams, who took the loss, gave up four runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings.