The Daily Closer: Home At Last

Notes from a day in baseball:

• Pujols Honors Jackie In His Own Special Way. It was Jackie Robinson's day, but Albert Pujols stole a moment or two. Pujols homered twice and had five RBI, to lead the Cardinals to their first home victory, 10-2 over the Brewers, which means that we can stop breathing into this paper bag. "Obviously, this year hasn't been working out early,'' said Pujols, who was hitting .158 prior to the game. "But just because I haven't found myself at the plate I don't want to go crazy.'' The Brewers' Ben Sheets (1-2) fell to 4-14 in 22 career starts against St. Louis.

• Boom Goes The Dynamite!. We would have liked to have seen the Vegas odds on Mariano Rivera vs. Marco Scutaro in the ninth inning on Sunday. We probably could have secured 2,000-1, and that house in the Hamptons would have been ours (complete with horses Snoopy and Prickly Pete). The scene: Two runners on, two outs, Rivera ahead in the count 0-2 on Scutaro, who is hitting .050 for the season so far. Even Scutaro's mom is in the parking lot to beat traffic. But Marvelous Marco drove the next pitch to the screen just inside the left-field foul pole for a three-run homer, giving Oakland a 5-4 win over the Yankees. Sweet Fancy Moses.

• Towers Of Power. Remember the Josh Towers Show from last season, in which our hero began the season 0-9? (He finished 2-10 with an ERA only dogs could hear, at 8.42). But on Sunday Towers (1-1) got his first win as a starter since May 14, 2006, with 7 2/3 solid innings in Toronto's 2-1 win over Detroit. John McDonald drove in the go-ahead run with a seventh-inning single.

• Kyle Lohse Es Muy Macho. With runners on first and third with the middle of the order coming up and nobody out, most pitchers would run screaming from the stadium. But not Kyle Lohse; stud. He proceeded to strike out Jacque Jones swinging, Derrek Lee looking, and got Michael Barrett on a fly to right to end the sixth, going on to strike out a career-high 12 in eight innings to lead the Reds to a 1-0 victory over the Cubs.

• Mmmm, Texas Pitching. The Mariners had four home runs — Jose Virdo twice, Ichiro Suzuki and Adrian Beltre — in a 14-6 win over the Rangers.