ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Josh Hamilton said God told him he'd hit a homer Thursday night. But that's the only promise he received.

Hamilton's towering home run into the Busch Stadium lights in the top of the 10th inning pushed the Texas Rangers to a 9-7 lead and moved the franchise for a second time in two innings to the precipice of its first World Series championship.

But the prize ultimately was yanked away when St. Louis third baseman David Freese hit a walk-off homer in the 11th for a 10-9 win.

Hamilton, who has been playing this postseason with a painful muscle pull or tear in his groin or maybe his abdomen, said divine intervention took over when he stepped to the plate in the 10th.

"He told me, 'You haven't hit one in a while, and this is the time you're going to,' " said Hamilton, who had gone 65 at-bats in the postseason without a home run. "You know what? I probably had the most relaxed, peaceful at-bat I've had of the whole series at that moment. It's pretty cool. You ought to try it sometime."

As Hamilton recalled the sequence of events in the Texas clubhouse after Game 6, he ruefully took note of the missing piece in the discussion: God promised him a four-bagger, but made no mention of the Rangers' bullpen collapse or Freese's game-tying triple in the ninth inning and game-winning homer in the 11th.

"There was a period at the end of [the sentence]," Hamilton said. "He didn't say, 'You're going to hit it and you're going to win.' "

For a moment, though, Hamilton was living in the movie "The Natural," he was channeling Kirk Gibson. He homered, and as clubhouse crews covered the visitors' lockers with protective tarp, and carts of bubbly and beer were moved into place, one thought pounded inside Hamilton's head.