HOUSTON -- Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt was sitting quietly at his locker at old Busch Stadium in St. Louis before one of the biggest starts in his career -- Game 6 of the 2005 National League Championship Series against the Cardinals. The weight of the world was on his shoulders.
Two days before, Houston was on the cusp of the World Series when Albert Pujols hit his memorable ninth-inning homer off Brad Lidge to stun the crowd at Minute Maid Park in Game 5. St. Louis won the contest and returned home needing to win two games to reach the World Series -- the exact situation the Cardinals were in against the Astros a year earlier when they pulled it off. It was up to Oswalt to prevent a Game 7 and a possible repeat of history.
Houston owner Drayton McLane, as he often did, made his way to the clubhouse to offer encouraging words to Oswalt. It’s customary to not talk to that day’s starting pitcher once he arrives at the ballpark, especially for such a big game, but McLane didn’t care.
“[Oswalt] wasn’t a big talker,” McLane said. “I started to give him a real pep talk, saying we had to win this game because we lost it under this situation last year. He didn’t move. He didn’t acknowledge I was there. I thought, I need to think of something quickly, and I thought of the bulldozer. I said, ‘Roy, if you win this game, I’ll buy you a brand-new Caterpillar bulldozer.’ He jumped straight up and threw the towel off his head and said, ‘You’ve got a deal!’”
McLane was speaking Oswalt’s language. The son of a logger, Oswalt had 40 acres of land near Weir, Miss., and he had previously told McLane he wished he had a bulldozer to help his father clear some tree stumps. Oswalt delivered that night, pitching seven strong innings in Game 6 to lead the Astros to a 5–1 win that clinched the NLCS and sent Houston to the World Series for the first time in its history.
“I remember about the sixth or seventh inning, I was walking off the field thinking, ‘I just won a bulldozer,’” Oswalt said. “I told him after the game, ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter what color or what size. Just call me when I need to pick it up.’”
On Dec. 19, 2005, a couple of months after the Astros were swept in the World Series by the White Sox, McLane delivered a new Caterpillar D6N XL bulldozer to Minute Maid Park on a flatbed trailer and with a red bow on top. The model cost an estimated $230,000.
"That's a pretty good gift for Christmas, for sure,'' Oswalt said.
Oswalt won 20 games for the Astros in 2004 and '05 in a rotation that included Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, both of whom left the Yankees to sign with their hometown Astros before the ’04 season. Oswalt was already an established ace in Houston and welcomed the challenge of two top-flight starters joining the rotation.
“When those guys came over, it was all about Roger and Andy,” Oswalt said. “They had played for the Yankees for a big-market team for a long time, and they had been to the World Series and stuff like that. I had it in my mind they weren’t going to beat me. I took that all through life. Somebody give me a challenge, I’m going to try to come out on the other side better.”
Oswalt learned the value of hard work growing up in Mississippi as the son of a Vietnam War veteran and logger.
“A lot of people get different compliments here and there, but my main goal coming into this as a player is when they talk about you is, ‘He left everything out on the field,’” Oswalt said. “I always did that. I didn’t go into a game thinking I was going to get beat. I always went into a game wondering how bad we were going to win. I was kind of raised that way. You take that all the way through life and apply it to everything.”
Oswalt won 143 games in 10 years with the Astros and was one win shy of Larry Dierker’s club record for wins before he asked to be traded halfway through the 2010 season. Oswalt’s trade triggered a massive rebuilding effort for the Astros, who didn’t return to the postseason until they won the 2015 American League Wild Card Series.