We’ve seen a lot of wild nights at Fenway Park this season, but Thursday night took the cake.

The Cardinals beat the Sox 8-7 in 13 innings, a game that lasted four hours, 33 minutes. This was a fast-paced pitchers’ duel for eight and a half innings, a stretch of baseball that took some two-and-a-half hours to play. It then took another two hours for the game to finish.

This game featured everything the 2003 Red Sox have to offer: clutch hitting, stand-up-and-cheer comebacks, and heartbreaking pitching failures. In the end, two-and-a-half hours of hair-raising rallies couldn’t overcome the struggles of the bullpen.

By the 10th inning, the Sox had no reserve players left on the bench. Too bad Tom Brady and Lawyer Milloy had already left. The two Patriots took batting practice earlier in the day, some seven hours before the end of the game.

Brady even hit a home run.

“If you’re any kind of baseball fan, all you can do is appreciate that game,” said Nomar Garciaparra in the wee hours of Friday morning. “That’s all you can do with this game. It was just an incredible game at both ends.

“All you can do is appreciate it and go home.”

Nomar went home with his head held high. He was the biggest local hero in this heroic struggle. In the bottom of the ninth, the Boston shortstop locked up in a terrific duel with veteran pitcher Cal Eldred. Garciaparra fouled off pitch after an outside pitch, waiting for an offering over the plate. He finally got one, and hammered it for his major-league leading 11th triple of the season. That scored the tying won, and the game went on.

In the 10th, there were two outs when Nomar strode to the plate with the Cardinals up by one. Again, he kept the game going with an RBI single.

Two innings later, it was Garciaparra’s defense extending the game, with a one-out throw home to nail Scott Rolen at the plate.

“In Japan, I think they play to a tie and appreciate ties,” said Nomar. “I think that’s what we should’ve done.”

There are no ties in American baseball. And after this loss, Trot Nixon was fit to be tied. He left a mind-boggling 12 runners on base, three times failing to drive in a run with the bases loaded. That included bases-loaded opportunities in the ninth and 10th innings.

“I could rip something apart,” said Nixon. “It stinks. It’s not fun at all. I can’t tell you how upset I am with my performance.”

Needless to say, Sox fans let Nixon and his teammates know. They were at their full-throttle best, hurling venom down on the team after Jim Edmonds’ three-run homer in the 13th put the Cardinals up for good.

Fans were still talking about the game a day later. Talking about the missed opportunities. Talking about the season-high 18 stranded runners, the amazing 14 Red Sox batters walked by St. Louis pitching.

Ultimately, the game should serve as a simple reminder: you cannot consistently beat good teams without good pitching. The Sox scored 27 runs in three games against the Cardinals, and could only take one victory out of the series. That’s not enough.

Let’s hope Thursday’s game was not a microcosm of the season. If it was, we could be in for a long, exciting season. One that could come up just short because of a lack of pitching.

Lewiston native Tom Caron is a sports analyst for NESN telecasts of Red Sox games.