Albert Pujols' three-hit, four-RBI night finally gave the Cardinals a .300-hitting starter, but Jason Isringhausen's apparent muscle injury dampened the mood of a 5-3 Redbird win over Milwaukee.

Izzy came on to start the 9th with a two-run lead, and, having just walked pinch-hitter Chris Magruder with one out, Izzy threw a pitch to Brady Clark then collapsed to one knee, gripping his right side above the hip. I'm no doctor, but it looked as if he strained a rib or oblique muscle, and he was removed immediately. The astute TV crew replayed Izzy's pitch previous to the pitch to Clark---the ball four to Magruder---and what had seemed at the time to be a reaction to the walk could now be seen in retrospect as Izzy reacting to a pain in his side. One pitch later and Izzy was clearly hurting after the pitch.

Isringhausen has been stellar in the early going, pitching with a command that Cardinal fans never saw last year. He had control over his slider and he was throwing his devastating curveball for strikes. As we saw with Woody Williams in 2002, an oblique strain takes weeks to recover from, and is aggravated easily if not completely healed, at which point you have to start the recovery all over again.

The bullpen as a unit has pitched well so far, but losing Izzy for several weeks would be a severe blow. I imagine LaRussa would mix and match based on the circumstances of a given situation rather than anoint someone the replacement closer. But LaRussa loves his players to have defined roles so maybe, say, Al Reyes will get to wear the cape.

Prior to Izzy's unfortunate 9th the Wound of the Night belonged to Brewers' first baseman Lyle Overbay, whose malady was described thusly in MLB's Gameday play-by-play:

Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Lyle Overbay left the game due to an injured head.

Overbay made a sensational play on a Rolen foul pop into the stands as he leaned against the tarp rolled up against the stands and extended over the railing to grab the ball, losing his balance as he made the catch, his face and chin coming down directly on top of the eight-inch-high plexiglass atop the wall. As Pujols, who had been on second, alertly tagged and scampered to third, Overbay rolled over onto the grass in foul territory and began to bleed onto the Busch Stadium sod. Overbay had to exit the contest and would require twelve stitches to close the gash on his chin.

Larry Walker reached base five times on two singles, two walks, and a HBP, but on a night in which the Cardinals had a multitude of runners on base (19) but left most of them (14) there, Albert Pujols was the man. Pujols hit three screamers on the night, the first two being doubles that plated the Cardinals first four runs (two in the 1st and two more in the 4th) and the last one a smash to left for a single in the 6th.

In the 4th, Pu also made the defensive play of the game when, as he lumbered in on a Russell Branyan bouncer, the ball suddenly took a hop to Pujols' left. Pujols dove sideways to field the ball, landed belly-first and turned a kind of barrel roll and as he came out of his roll managed to eject the ball on a graceful arc into the outstretched glove of Jeff Suppan covering first a nanosecond (or less) before Branyan's foot hit the bag.

Then Pujols laughed and stuck out his tongue as if to say, yeah, that was ridiculous.

But five innings later the miens were more serious, and now we'll have to cross our fingers and hope that for Izzy it's nothing more than a strain, a few days of rest. But for a team of aging veterans that dodged serious injury throughout the joyride of 2004, the Cardinals lucky run may have given out.