HOUSTON — Nobody stood up to the media in his darkest moments like Dennis Eckersley, for whom immediate and total dissection of disaster was clearly a cleansing act.

Eckersley, of course, survived quite nicely the Kirk Gibson home run in the 1988 World Series, and another killer by Toronto's Roberto Alomar in the 1992 American League Championship Series. Both devastating moments proved to be only hiccups in his Hall of Fame career.

Others have not been so resilient. Mitch Williams was never quite the same after Joe Carter in the '93 World Series, nor Tom Niedenfuer after the Ozzie Smith/Jack Clark double whammy in the 1985 National League Championship Series.

This all comes to mind as Houston closer Brad Lidge tries to get past the gut-wrenching jolts of his past two appearances.

He is not in Ralph Branca or Williams territory, because the first homer, by Albert Pujols in the NLCS, did not cost Houston the pennant, and the second, by Scott Podsednik, has not cost it the World Series.

But for Houston to have any chance of getting back in the World Series, which resumes here tonight with the Astros trailing the White Sox two games to none, they will need from Lidge an instant catharsis.

Perhaps that is why he has been facing up so impressively to his misfortune, as stand-up as Eckersley ever was.

One observer of his clubhouse interview session after the stunning Pujols blast, which came after the Astros had been one strike away from their first Series appearance and sucked the air right out of Houston, said Lidge sounded like someone speaking too loud at a funeral.

He was much the same in the clubhouse on Sunday after Podsednik's game-ender. He stood tall and answered every question, just like Eckersley after Gibson, and did so again Monday at the Astros' off-day workout at Minute Maid Park.

What was missing, however, was Eck's visible anguish, the open window into a bruised soul. Lidge seemed oddly unperturbed, freakishly unperturbed — or at least under-perturbed, as if he had blown a May game against Pittsburgh and not a vital swing game of the World Series.

"Unfortunately, the timing of it is magnified, obviously," he said. "I'm not really planning on changing anything. I'm just going to keep doing what I do. I think my next time out we're going to have success."

His manager and teammates, of course, backed him on that sentiment, and with justification. Lidge is a closer of the first order. When Edgar Martinez faced him for the first time in an interleague game, he said Lidge had the best slider he had ever seen, an opinion espoused again this year by Larry Walker.

Lidge is as nasty as they come with a 97-mph fastball and 92-mph slider, stuff that players like to call "sick." In 2004, he set a National League record for most strikeouts by a reliever (157 in 94-2/3 innings) and he was just as dominant this year.

At least, until Pujols and Podsednik, which will either be the defining moments of his career or ephemeral hiccups.

The Astros speak about Lidge's character, and aggressively advance the hiccup theory.

"This is a guy that's come back from tremendous physical problems in his career [four surgeries in his first five years as a pro]," said Houston general manager Tim Purpura. "A lot of guys would have given it up a long time ago. I've known Brad Lidge since the day he walked into this organization, and I've got no doubts in my mind about him."

Jeff Bagwell said he merely patted Lidge on the back and said, "Hey, man, no big deal, whatever."

"I know this is a big stage and a big situation, but Brad Lidge is a hell of a closer and I want him on the mound in the same situation. I've got the utmost confidence in him. He's going to be fine."

Houston manager Phil Garner told the story Monday of his first World Series appearance with Pittsburgh in 1979, in which he made an error that wound up costing them the game. He hit .500 in the Series, a seven-game Pirates triumph, and narrowly lost the MVP award to teammate Willie Stargell.

"My point is not about me," Garner said. "My point is, a ballplayer can look crappy one day, and you can have a bunch of good days after that."

After the Pujols blast, which forced the NLCS back to St. Louis, Houston catcher Brad Ausmus handed the pilot of their charter flight a script. After giving the altitude and fasten-seat-belt instructions, the pilot said:

"And if you look off to the left side of the aircraft in two or three minutes, you might catch a glimpse of Albert Pujols' home-run ball."

That cracked up Lidge and relieved the tension. There were apparently no such moments of levity on Sunday's flight back to Houston. Or maybe Lidge just missed them. He slept most of the way from Chicago.

"Then I got home, my baby [11-month-old Avery] got up, and I had to change her diaper," he said. "At that point, I was not thinking much about the game."

Morgan Ensberg was almost incredulous Monday when asked whether teammates felt the need to boost Lidge's spirits.

"No, because he's not down," Ensberg said. "You understand baseball is all about managing failure. We mess up so much, and this team specifically has messed up — 15-30 to start the season off.

"That is miserable. We are in the World Series now. These things are going to happen. Brad is not down in the dumps or something like that. We want Brad to have the ball at all times.

"I'm not going to go over there and say, 'Hey, buddy, stay up.' He's going to be like, 'What are you talking about?' He's fine. This stuff happens. It's part of baseball."

Fair enough. But if it happens too much, at too many wrong times, it becomes part of baseball infamy.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com