ST. LOUIS — Carlos Beltran strikes again.
In his bid to reach the first World Series of his Hall of Fame career, Beltran placed the Cardinals on his shoulders Friday into Saturday, setting off fireworks high above Busch Stadium at 12:25 a.m. local time.
Beltran’s RBI single off Kenley Jansen in the 13th inning gave the Cardinals a 3-2 victory over the Dodgers in Game 1 of the NLCS, ending nearly five hours of baseball.
“Today is kind of a preview of how bad they want to win and how bad we want to win,” Beltran said after driving in all three runs for the Cardinals and making the defensive play of the game.
The teams are set for Game 2 on Saturday, with Clayton Kershaw scheduled to face Cardinals rookie Michael Wacha.
Beltran threw a strike to the plate in the top of the 10th inning, nailing Mark Ellis as he attempted to score the go-ahead run. Beltran called off Jon Jay on Michael Young’s fly to medium right and fired home to Yadier Molina, who absorbed a collision with Ellis in recording the inning’s final out.
“[Beltran] has been a pro all season long and it’s just fun to watch him do his thing,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. “The guy is a player.”
Beltran said he called “five or six times” for the Young’s ball because he realized he had a better throwing angle than Jay.
“Once I caught it, I was hoping to make a good throw home,” Beltran said. “Thank God I did that. And I saw Yadier kind of in the crouch waiting for the ball and I thought we were going to have a chance. And thank God we did.”
Matheny’s counterpart, Don Mattingly, gambled in the eighth by removing Adrian Gonzalez for a pinch-runner and saw the move backfire, after the Dodgers didn’t score. In the 10th inning, Hanley Ramirez was intentionally walked with the go-ahead run at third base, bringing Young to the plate in the spot Gonzalez normally would have hit. Young hit the ball to right that Beltran turned into two outs, and in the 12th inning hit into a double play after Ramirez had again been intentionally walked.
“You’ve got to shoot your bullet when you’ve got a chance,” Mattingly said, when asked about his decision to remove Gonzalez for pinch-runner Dee Gordon. “If we don’t use [Gordon] there and the next guy hits a ball in the gap and doesn’t score there, we’re going to say, ‘Why didn’t you use Dee?’ ”
Zack Greinke dominated for eight innings, allowing two runs on four hits with 10 strikeouts and one walk. The right-hander was removed for a pinch-hitter in the eighth, after throwing 104 pitches.
The Cardinals relied heavily on their bullpen, using six relievers to pitch seven innings. Lance Lynn got the victory after allowing one hit and one walk over the final two innings.
Joe Kelly gave the Cardinals a second straight respectable start in this postseason, allowing two earned runs on six hits with two walks over six innings. The right-hander rebounded from a shaky third inning in which the Dodgers scored twice to retire 10 of the last 12 batters he faced.
Beltran’s two-run double in the third made it 2-2 after Greinke had struck out David Freese and Pete Kozma to start the inning. But the pitcher Kelly singled and Matt Carpenter walked  before Beltran hit a shot to center that just missed clearing the fence.
It probably didn’t help the Dodgers’ cause that Andre Ethier, who hadn’t started a game since Sept. 13, was in center instead of more defensively dependable Schumaker. Ethier had battled a left ankle injury, but convinced team brass he could handle the task.
Juan Uribe’s two-run single in the top of the inning gave the Dodgers their first runs. Kelly might have escaped the inning unscathed, but with the bases loaded bobbled a Yasiel Puig comebacker, costing him a shot at the double play. Kelly got the force at home plate for the second out and then allowed the single to Uribe.
Kelly created the jam by walking Ramirez and Gonzalez in succession after Carl Crawford delivered a leadoff double.