TOWER GROVE — Long before Kevin Youkilis settled into the box and started the waggle of his hips and wiggle of his bat that would end it in the 13th inning, Sunday’s game at Fenway Park was a classic.

Not many games have as much packed into them as Sunday’s Cardinals’ 5-3 loss.

By coincidence, as the game went on and on and on and became more and more compelling, I was digging through some books here for information on the best games in Cardinals history. There would seem to be several categories for these seat-edge games: Modern and Historical, perhaps as the kingdom, and October and Other as the phylum. (That would MOct, HOct, MOth, HOth.) These aren’t necessarily the games that include a historic performance — Jim Bottomley’s 6-for-6, 12-RBI game was a rout, 17-3 — but games that captivated, were close, chocked with lead changes, gaffes, heroics, drama … kitchen-sink games.

Feel free to add to this short list:

• Bake McBride scores in the 25th inning to win in 1974. (HOth)
• Roger Freed drills a pinch-hit grand slam in the 11th to beat Houston. (HOth)
• Willie McGee’s cycle, Ryne Sandberg’s homers in 1984. (MOth)
• “Go Crazy Folks!” (MOct)
• Mark Mulder duels Roger Clemens in a 10-inning shutout at ol’ Busch. (MOth)
• Seat cushion night (s). (MOth)
• Dean Bros. Doubleheader. (HOth)
• Jack Clark’s homer. (MOct)
• Just a few weeks ago, Skip Schumaker’s walk-off home run against the Cubs capped a tremendous game that saw a ninth-inning comeback by Chicago and and an 11th-inning shot by Schu. (MOth)
• … yours here …
• Almost any game from the 2004 NLCS vs. Houston. (MOct)

Though the history books will probably recite how the 2004 ALCS was the series to end all series, the one going on in the other league, outside of the New York-Boston bubble was just as entralling and may have featured two of the best players at their brightest, Cardinals’ Albert Pujols and Houston’s anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better Carlos Beltran. Games 6 and 7, however, were classics. Taut games with tremendous plays and sudden heroes. One expression says it all.

As Joe Strauss quoted Jim Edmonds during the series, October is “when people do superhuman things.” On Oct. 20, 2004, Edmonds did. That night Houston rallied from a 4-2 deficit and conjured 8 2/3 scoreless innings from its bullpen. The Cardinals led the entire game, though never certainly. In the ninth, with two outs, Jeff Bagwell bruised closer Jason Isringhausen, who was on for a two-inning save, for a game-tying single. And on the series went, deep into the night at Busch Stadium. The night may be remembered for the pictured fist pumps, but the game offered an added twist of redemption: Julian Tavarez, his fingers fractured from a disagreement with the dugout phone just days earlier and his left hand plump with swelling and pain killers, retired all six batters he faced in extra innings. He got the win when Edmonds creamed Dan Miceli’s pitch in the 12th for the winner, the shot that sent the series to Game 7.

And that is the kind of recipe it takes to make a kitchen-sink game.

A quick search of the Post-Dispatch’s morgue reveals that the adjective “riveting” was recently used to describe a win on May 5 at Colorado; the final home game of last season when a 1-1 tie snapped in the top of ninth was won by Rick Ankiel’s triple in the bottom of the ninth; and a few other innings here or there. Same story with “captivating”. Those words are not thrown around lightly. Though both apply to game played Sunday and the last one the Cardinals had like it.

Consider all the great-game elements Sunday:

• SURPRISE STARTER. From the top. In his first start since June 8, after a week with just one at-bat, Brian Barton not only has a key catch while tripping over Ankiel in left-center field, he later knocks in the first run of the game with a double off dominating Jon Lester. Barton then steals third and scores for a 2-0 lead.
• RETURN MESSAGE. Joel Pineiro returns to the place that dumped him. Holds his former team to two runs in seven innings.
• PERSONAL HIGHLIGHT. Rookie Nick Stavinoha makes his major-league debut and gets his first big-league hit, a blooper to right the sixth.
• GREAT DEFENSE. That hit came only after Stavinoha’s best-hit ball of the game was snagged by Jacoby Ellsbury with a diving catch in left.
• GREATER DEFENSE. In 12th inning, shortstop Aaron Miles – who started the game at second base — goes to his usual side of second base to snag a grounder. But instead of going with his momentum, Miles wheels toward to third base and easily gets Dustin Pedroia as he, the would-be winning run, attempts to advance on the groundball. Miles then pivots the inning-ending double play.
• GREAT LAPSE. In the eighth, center fielder Ankiel appeared to have a bead on Coco Crisp’s fly ball to center only to over-shoot the ball and slip as he reached back to catch it. Crisp ends up at third and Boston’s two-run rally is on.
• GREATER LAPSE. RBI leader Ryan Ludwick strikes out with the bases loaded in the 11th inning, failing to capitalize on on a series of singles.
• GREATEST LAPSE. Rookie Chris Perez walks in the go-ahead run in the eighth on his third consecutive walk of the inning.
• CAREER DAY. Miles goes 5-for-6 with five singles.
• DAVID MEET GOLIATH. The unexpectedly contending Cardinals against the defending World Series champions and their 28-7 record at Fenway this season. The teams came into Sunday with one looking for a sweep and the other out to salvage a series. It just wasn’t the way most expected.
• CONTEXT. Cards. Sox. Fenway. Hello. And, the past two World Series champs.
• PLAYERS PUSHED. Russ Springer and Kyle McClellan were supposedly off limits for Sunday’s game. Both pitched. They combined to pitch two scoreless innings with a strikeout. Yadier Molina started at first base to get his bat in the lineup but keep him from the rigors of catching as he recovers from a mild concussion. Sure enough, the mechanics of the game and the opportunity to tie the game in the ninth forced Molina behind the plate for extra innings.
• NAILBITER MOMENTS. Red Sox leave the bases loaded in the eighth and again in the 12th.
• DOUBLE TROUBLE. Boston leads off the 10th, 11th and 12th with doubles. Not one of those Red Sox doublers score.
• DOWN TO THEIR LAST STRIKE. Adam Kennedy had three hits and he didn’t enter the game until the ninth inning. That was he had his biggest hit of the game. Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon struck out the first two batters he faced in the ninth. Pinch-hitter Chris Duncan walked. Kennedy batted for Brendan Ryan – who did double in his first two at-bats — and fell behind 0-2. One strike away from a Boston victory, Kennedy laced a shot off the wall in center to score Duncan and tie the game, 3-3.
• THE STATISTICAL IMPROBABILITY. Kennedy’s game-tying pinch hit was  his first pinch hit since 2006, the season before he became a Cardinal.
• REDEMPTION. Jason Isringhausen enters into the tightest situation yet since he returned from a doctor-prescribed sabbatical. Three of the first four batters he faces reach base. Not one scores. The bend-but-don’t-break righthander snaps of a series of his AWOL breaking ball to strikeout Alex Cora and Ellsbury with the bases loaded and the winning run 90 feet from home.
• PLAY AT THE PLATE. In the top of the 13th, Duncan doubles with one out. Kennedy loops his third hit of the game to right field and Duncan, a better runner than many seem to believe, spins around third only to be cut down at home in a collision with catcher/captain Jason Varitek.
• WALK OFF. Youkilis, apparently also the Greek God of Shimmy, hits his second homer of the game, this one a two-run blast that wins it in the 13th.

A “hellacious” game, manager Tony La Russa called it. And it was. All that was missing from the last kitchen-sink game the Cardinals had — one of the greatest games any of us will ever see in person or on TV — was Endy Chavez, October elimination, and one filthy curve freezing Beltran. Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS is the very definition of riveting. Offer up some others.

Because for a regular-season game, Sunday was as close as it gets.

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