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ARLINGTON, Texas — The bullpen was fried, battered beyond belief by a Saturday night massacre, a Birdbath bloodbath. The season was sitting on the precipice, nudged there by the Cardinals, who could smell an 11th world championship now, opportunity thick in the air like concession-stand red hots.
The Rangers hadn’t lost three games in a row since late August, but they sure looked wobbly and woozy as they left Rangers Ballpark Saturday night, suffocated by the fumes of Albert Pujols’ historic night, buried under a 16-7 barrage. They looked vulnerable. The same blueprint the Giants used a year ago — split at home, take Game 3 in Texas — was fueling the Cardinals now.
And yet Texas manager Ron Washington, forever a Zen soul in the midst of the autumnal madness, had a good feeling. And knew why.
“Derek Holland and Mike Napoli,” Washington said. “That was the reason. It was all Derek Holland and Mike Napoli.”
After it was over, after the Rangers had blanked the Cardinals 4-0 and evened this 107th World Series at 2-2, after Holland had thrown the game of his life and Napoli had hit a baseball so hard you half expected it to land in Cowboys Stadium across the street, Washington sounded like a mystic, a prophet, a yogi.
And, yes, Holland did throw four shutouts this year, which happens to be one more than Justin Verlander had. He did win 16 games this year. And his idol, growing up in Newark, Ohio, was another left-hander who knew more than his share of success in the postseason: Andy Pettitte.
But Washington knew, as Holland knew, that last year, in two World Series relief appearances against the Giants, these were the horrific numbers that sat next to his name: one inning, three earned runs, four walks, a 27.00 ERA, a 4.00 WHIP.
Washington knew, as Holland knew, that he has a habit of getting too emotional, too high, too low, too intense, too extreme. In addition to those four shutouts this year, were eight different games in which he allowed five or more earned runs.
“This is the dream,” Holland said. “I wanted to win in the World Series. I wanted to be prepared. I wasn’t going to let this slip away from me.”
He didn’t. He wasn’t perfect, but he was damn close. He surrendered all of two his across 8 1/3 innings, he electrified The Ballpark when he walked out to the mound for the ninth and received an ear-splitting ovation when he finally handed the ball and the game over to Neftali Feliz with one on and one out.
As much as anything, this is what the Rangers craved, what they had to have. The bullpen looked like a triage unit after Saturday night, bandages wrapping bruised egos rather than bloody limbs. Holland had 118 pitches in him, and he handcuffed Pujols and Matt Holliday and every Cardinal not named Lance Berkman.
“He worked us over,” St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said.
And even with such brilliance, Holland needed a wingman, and that’s where Napoli came in. Napoli, who was hitting .223 as late as July 7, but finished in a rush, hitting 385/.465/.719 over last 63 games and 256 plate appearances. Napoli, exchanged for Vernon Wells in what may be as close to a Ryan-for-Fregosi trade that Ryan himself will ever oversee.
One swing, on the first pitch Mitchell Boggs threw, and a 1-0 sixth-inning lead was 4-0, and suddenly there was a reason for all the smiles and bright moods that had already invaded The Ballpark. “I knew he wanted to throw a double play ball to me, and I wanted to make him get the ball up,” Napoli said. “And he did.”
In New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Chicago — in all those veteran, hard-bitten, hard-boiled baseball cities where angst nourishes the locals as much as calories do — the cheeriness with which the locals wandered around the yard last night would have seemed as foreign as a Euro note.
In those places, the tension would have been so thick last night, you would have needed a chainsaw and a Ginsu to cut through half of it.
In this place, all they needed was Derek Holland.
All they needed was Mike Napoli.
“All Derek Holland and Mike Napoli,” Ron Washington said. And now it’s a two-out-of-three. Fun times in The Ballpark.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com