When you're going good, you lay down a two-strike bunt like you're Rod Carew. You don't really know how you do it. You can't say why. You just square around, your bat meets the low-and-inside slider and the ball rolls down the first-base line like it has orders.

A two-strike bunt is an audacious thing when the tying run is at third base late in the game and there are two outs.

As Reggie Taylor, the bunt's author, noted, if you don't get it down, "You're the biggest idiot in Cincinnati."

There are no idiots in Cincinnati today. At least not in the home clubhouse, where everything is coming up strawberries in wintertime. The Reds just took four straight from the Cardinals, three in fairy-dust fashion, and suddenly it's safe to go to the ballpark again.

A week from now, it could all be pleasant memory, a sweet interlude between failed starting pitching and pan-handed glove work. But for four days, the Reds have lived in an exalted state of do-no-wrong grace. "I don't want to explain it," Aaron Boone explained.

Boone was talking about his three-homer game Thursday, another pleasant detail in the 8-6 win. He could have been describing the whole series. Baseball players don't trust success or mourn failure, because they get some of each every day. They certainly don't spend any time analyzing it.

When it's good, let it ride. Deeper analysis means you're thinking too much.

When Reggie Taylor laid down that bunt in the sixth inning, he wasn't thinking at all. "I had no clue," he said. Until Cardinals reliever Mike Crudale let fly the 1-2 pitch, Taylor thought he'd swing away. "I'm getting ready to swing," Taylor said. "Do I want to try to bunt? It was a last-minute thing."

Last-minute? Taking the Concorde to Paris for the weekend is last-minute. Wearing the blue dress instead of the red is last-minute. Going from swinging away to bunting during a pitcher's windup is batting an eyelash.

Usually, it doesn't work. You foul the pitch off, you bunt through it. You strike out. With the Reds now, anything works. Taylor got the bunt down. Adam Dunn scored the tying run. "Doing little things like that in key times separates teams," Aaron Boone said.

Two batters later, a routine grounder rolled up St. Louis shortstop Edgar Renteria's arm and a hustling Jose Guillen reached base as Kelly Stinnett scored. Sean Casey then added another RBI single.

If Guillen isn't running like Deion to first, he's out and the inning ends. But because it's the Reds right now and everyone is playing like it's the seventh game of the World Series, Guillen is safe and the inning goes on.

You can play a long time and not experience a series like the one just completed. Some of it is simply things sorting themselves out; the Reds weren't as bad as their 5-13 start. Nobody's that bad, except maybe Detroit. Some of it is the confidence winning breeds. A little of it is camaraderie. This group of players enjoys playing together and for each other.

Much of it, though, is serendipity. A beauty of baseball is that, across six months of playing games every day, you're liable to see just about anything. "Days like this (are) as humbling as the tough" days, Aaron Boone decided. Also, a whole lot easier to take.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com