SOME AIRPORT — Not since Oliver Perez and the Great Bat Flip has a pitcher irked Albert Pujols in the way Brandon Backe must have before Wednesday night’s game at Minute Maid Park.

As mentioned in the paper and many other places, the simmering feud between Backe and Pujols pre-dates his slide through catcher J.R. Towles on Tuesday. It goes back to the 2004 NLCS and Backe’s grand debut and it spiked a year later when Pujols sent a certain homer into the Houston night and delayed Backe & Co.’s champagne celebration.

No need to rehash what happened Wednesday — and the two home runs that followed — when it’s all over the paper today, and also in the Houston Chronicle from Joseph Duarte and over at MLB.com from Matthew Leach and Alyson Footer, as well.

But there was a final coda on the spat.

While Backe declined to comment over in the Astros’ clubhouse after the game, Pujols also said he did want to comment on Backe’s direct comments to press. Yet, in his no comment, there was a comment. It spoke directly to Backe’s assertion that Pujols’ slide — which upended Towles at home plate Tuesday in the eighth inning — was “not professional.”

Charged words.

Charged words that manager Tony La Russa pushed back on by calling Pujols a “fierce competitor” and a “complete professional” before launching into a description of his “cheerleading” in the dugout “even when he’s 0-for-4″. Charged words that when asked about Pujols had his no-comment comment, that hinted he’d heard that accusation before.

“No matter who gets me mad or who does not, I’m going to go out there and play the game the right way,” he said. “Let him talk however he wants to talk. I don’t have any comment. This is being professional, what I’m doing. Not talking in the paper. That’s professional.”

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Pujols frustrations were percolating before, as one friend of mine called it, “Slidegate.”  Pujols told as after the game that he came to the ballpark early to work in the cage and watch some video. He believes he isolated a fault in his swing that began during the Washington series and he wanted to work quickly to correct it. He called Wednesday’s game good because he went out there and tried what he worked on — and had success with it.

“Obviously I didn’t have a home run (in the first eight games),” he said. “Didn’t have the RBIs. But I was getting on base and the guys behind me were driving me in. Obviously, I chased some bad pitch out of the strike zone. Like everybody else. I’m human. I’m not a robot. And I’m human and I’m going to make a mistake and chase a pitch. Things like that happen for a reason, so you can learn from it.”

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There was a track record for Pujols having struggled against the three pitchers who Houston threw out there during this past series. That was covered in the P-D’s new daily newsletter that went out Wednesday.

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So about that sixth inning: The game was delayed because home plate umpire Joe West wanted Houston to change the sign behind home plate. Apparently, it was white when the Cardinals were in the field and a darker color when Houston was in the field. La Russa said West had asked them to change it several times. To start the sixth, West asked starter Braden Looper if it was bothering him — if he could see the ball on a comebacker. Looper said it was fine.

He then promptly fielded a groundball with no problem.

However, second baseman Adam Kennedy said he couldn’t see that same grounder at all, not coming out of the white background. That convinced West it had to be changed. Said La Russa: “Don’t mess with Joe West.”

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Add Signgate and Slidegate to the growing number of ‘gates in the rivalry between Houston and the Cardinals. And also add a couple new names: Kyle McClellan and Miguel Tejada. What a home debut Tejada had in the first games of his career against the career. He won the home fans over at the expense of the Cardinals and their rookie reliever. Then a few nights later, McClellan leveled the ledger by getting Tejada to popup with the tying run on base.

Remains to be seen how good either of these teams will be. But their series will be.

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