When I heard the news yesterday that Roy Halladay had died, I'm guessing I'm not the only Cardinals fan whose mind drifted back to Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS.

I might catch a Halladay start here and there over the years, particularly during the playoffs. I watched his no-hitter in the 2010 NLDS. But so much of my baseball viewing comes through the lens of the Cardinals, no performance of his is burned into my memory with the intensity of that winner-take-all showdown with Chris Carpenter.

The complete game was included on the 2011 World Series DVD - one of many purchases I made drunk and delirious with joy moments after the Cardinals sealed that Championship - so last night seemed like a good time to remember Doc and watch that game again.

The broadcast team featured Dick Stockton, Ron Darling and John Smoltz - just two years removed from his brief closing act as a Cardinal. The late Craig Sager was the reporter on the field.

You probably remember the first inning. Halladay's 4th pitch to leadoff man Rafael Furcal was a fastball up and over the heart of the plate, which he ripped into the right field gap for a triple.

Skip Schumaker followed, and Halladay got him 0-2 with a pair of breaking balls. But Schumaker battled, fouling off pitch after pitch, running the count full, before finally driving the 10th - a hanging curve - into the right field corner for a double.

Halladay had thrown everything to Schumaker around the edges - outside, down, inside - until the 10th pitch got away from him. It was probably the worst pitch he would throw on the night.

Watching the game from a modern perspective, it's also clear that Carlos Ruiz was an absolutely terrible pitch-framer, something the numbers would soon bear out. Once they had Schumaker 0-2, Ruiz began setting up outside with a kind-of Tony Pena leg lean, accentuating his off-the-plate positioning. He lost the call on an outside curveball that should have been strike three.

But while his catcher didn't do him any favors, Halladay didn't quite have a handle on his stuff in that 1st inning - particularly against the left handers. And the Phillies were lucky to only give up that one run.

The Cardinals helped out, with Schumaker getting TOOTBLAN'd after hesitating to advance to third on an infield cue shot from Pujols. Halladay again struggled with the lefty-hitting Berkman, who worked a 7-pitch at-bat before being awarded first base on catcher's interference from Ruiz. Halladay also uncorked a wild pitch which moved Pujols to 2nd and would have scored Schumaker, had he made 3rd.

But Halladay settled-in against the right-handed Holliday and Molina, inducing a pop-out in foul territory and a groundout to get out of the first having given up just that single run. But it was still very much a "stress inning."

Whereas Halladay struggled a bit in the first, Chris Carpenter almost immediately found his preferred weapon for the night: The curveball. He struck out Utley by dropping hammer after hammer, some crossing through the bottom of the zone, others crashing all the way into the dirt.

When Halladay took the mound for the 2nd, he followed suit - relying heavily on his curve, including an at-bat from Freeze where that was all he threw. We think of the Curveball Revolution as a relatively modern thing, but in this - one of the best postseason pitching duels of all-time - both men threw breaking pitches the majority of the time.

What's maybe most impressive about Halladay's performance is how dominant he became after an opening frame where he didn't just give up some fluke dinger, but legitimately struggled, throwing 32 pitches.

Every major league pitcher is capable of putting together a dominant game every now and then, from Mike Leake to Bud Smith. Very few can do what Halladay did that night: Begin a game out-of-sorts, maybe with not their best stuff, and recover to a level of absolute dominance.

Halladay would scatter just four hits over the next seven innings, none for extra bases. His lone walk was intentional, to Albert Pujols, to load the bases in the 8th inning with just one out. With a strikeout of Berkman and a fly out from Holliday, Halladay would complete his 8th inning with a total of seven strikeouts. He threw 126 pitches, 87 of which were strikes.

But due up third and down by a run in the bottom of the 8th, Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel really had no choice but to shake Halladay's hand as he came into the dugout and let him know he was coming out of the game. Halladay walked quietly down the tunnel.

Carpenter would get through the bottom of the 8th relatively unscathed, with only Halladay's pinch-hitter Ross Gload reaching on a dropped third strike and throwing error from Molina. Carpenter himself was due to bat 4th in the top of the 9th, but Tony La Russa had nobody warming up in the bullpen. Carpenter would finish the game with a 1-2-3 9th.

Roy Halladay's line would be 8 innings, 6 hits and one (intentional walk), with seven strikeouts, good for a Game Score of 72. Carpenter would nearly pull off "the Maddux," with a complete game shutout on 110 pitches. He struck out only three, but gave up just three hits and walked nobody, good for a Game Score of 84.

The game would end the season for the 102-win Phillies and effectively end the run of great Phillies teams of that era, tragically and poetically, with Ryan Howard tearing his achilles tendon on the final out of the game and writhing in pain on the field as the Cardinals celebrated.

It was also the last moment of dominance from Halladay. Two months into the 2012 season, he would hit the disabled list with shoulder issues, which would persist for the next two seasons, ultimately leading to surgery on his labrum and rotator cuff, and his retirement. His ERA those final two seasons was more than 5.00.

RIP Doc. We'll always remember your Hall of Fame career and, as Cardinal fans in particular, that one amazing game.