Facing a loss that in all practicality would have dealt their playoff aspirations a near-mortal blow, the Cardinals rallied for a rousing 5-3 lead over the Brewers at Busch Stadium on Wednesday night. Then, perhaps most strikingly, they made it hold up in the ninth inning.

Troy Glaus avoided catcher Jason Kendall's tag on a fielder's-choice grounder by Aaron Miles to score the winning run in the eighth, and Felipe Lopez singled home another just in case. Chris Perez allowed a double in the ninth, but struck out Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder to preserve the win.

The Cardinals salvaged a two-game split with Milwaukee, ended a seven-game losing streak against the Brewers and pulled back within 3 1/2 games of the National League Wild Card lead with 28 games left in the season.

The two division rivals have no remaining head-to-head meetings. A loss would have left the Cards six back in the loss column and, in fact, would have dropped them to third place in the Wild Card race -- behind Philadelphia as well as Milwaukee.

"Huge," said Ryan Franklin, who collected the win in relief. "It's a huge difference. Three and a half is like a series -- a series away from leading it. We've still got 28 games left. That's plenty of time."

Manny Parra and Carlos Villanueva kept St. Louis quiet over the first seven innings, with only Ryan Ludwick's solo homer interrupting the strand of zeros on the scoreboard. The Cardinals finished the seventh with a 3-1 deficit.

They also finished it with their dander up. After Villanueva got Joe Mather to pop out with the bases loaded to end the seventh, he gestured and hollered, drawing the Cards' ire.

"I didn't care about what he was yelling," said Albert Pujols. "But when he started pointing to the dugout ... that's when I got [angry]. That's when I told him shut up and go to the dugout. He doesn't have to do that.

"And then he said something in Spanish that I'm not going to say to you guys, and that's when I got fired up and I told him to stop and come and say it to my face. And he was running away. That's all right. I'm going to see him later."

If there's one thing opponents should know by now, it's not to irritate Pujols. He led off the eighth with a double, and co-MVP candidate Ludwick made it a matched set with an RBI two-bagger. Glaus singled to score Ludwick, taking second on the throw home.

After Yadier Molina's grounder advanced Glaus to third, pinch-hitter Miles hit a chopper right at shortstop J.J. Hardy, who fired home. But Glaus evaded Kendall's attempt at a tag, and the Cards led, 4-3. A sacrifice bunt and a Lopez single provided another run.

"I like going on contact," Glaus said. "It's a good, aggressive play. It's a difficult play for an infielder because it's not something we do very often. I've seen it work out a lot more times than it doesn't. I like the play."

The runs got Adam Wainwright off the hook, and deservedly so. Like Todd Wellemeyer a night before, Wainwright's pitching line didn't do justice to the quality of his pitching. The first run against him scored on three third-inning infield hits, aided by a throwing error from the pitcher himself.

In the fourth, the Brewers managed two perfectly placed doubles -- one of them a two-hop chopper that barely eluded Glaus -- followed by a ground-ball single through a drawn-in infield.

"We've got just over a month to play," Wainwright said. "You don't want to get too many games behind that team right there. They're an incredibly talented team. ... I think it's a very, very big win. It looked like were getting close to being out [of it] there."