On his prettiest day, Brett Myers is liable to be pegged as someone who belongs in a biker bar.

With his long goatee and love of trucker shirts, the Houston Astros closer is not going for style points. So it probably should be no surprise that Myers ends up eating dirt to get the last out of the Astros' biggest win of the season. The stuff is still splattered across his white uniform pants when he meets the media after Saturday night's 6-5 vanquishing of the Texas Rangers.

Minute Maid's finest light brown infield dirt. A testament to the work of The Regulators, the title that the Astros bullpen has given themselves. Or more accurately, the title that Myers, the guy who goes by @TheOutlaw39 himself on Twitter, has deemed that they should go by.

Turned back into a closer at age 31 in a move that surprised baseball's sabermetric set even though it was made by the Astros' new numbers-loving general manager Jeff Luhnow, Myers has emerged as the leader and confidence booster of a Houston bullpen that had virtually none of either quality last season.

One who can make Josh Hamilton look a little silly in an all-important at bat. You know Hamilton, the guy who is now widely considered the best player in baseball. For before he hits the dirt for a win, Myers gets Hamilton to hit a weak tapper ground out. That's what starts the game-ending double play that has Myers chasing down — or at least doggedly pursing — one of the fastest players in baseball.

When Hamilton steps to the plate in the ninth inning, with a man on, and the Rangers trailing by a run, the second sellout crowd of the entire season at Minute Maid Park (after only Opening Day) is hardly anticipating a weak grounder from the man who wants to win a Triple Crown. But that's all Hamilton can do with Myers' pitch and Elvis Andrus finds himself caught in no-man's land between first and second base.

All someone has to do is just get after it and tag him. That someone happens to be Myers, the chief Regulator.

"I don't know, man," Myers says when asked if he's ever ended a game with a rundown before. "I've played a lot of baseball. Maybe when I was younger."

The play did look a little bit like something you might see in your kid's Little League game. Only the stakes are much, much higher. And the bodies in motion are much, much faster. At least, Andrus is. Myers — who is character fit to hang with Kenny Powers not a sprinter's starting block — is just . . . determined.

"I was really trying to tackle him," Myers laughs.

It ends up almost looking like he did. For there's Myers sprawled on the dirt, with Andrus getting called out and Rangers manager Ron Washington finishing the baseball part of his night by walking out to talk to an umpire.

This win doesn't mean that Astros fans have reclaimed their ballpark from all the red and blue shirt clad Rangers fans who've been pouring into Minute Maid. The bandwagon horde will be back for the series finale on Sunday. It doesn't mean that there is suddenly a real Texas rivalry between Dallas and Houston's Major League Baseball teams either.

It will take a whole lot more games like this, not just Bud Selig forcing the Astros into the American League West starting next season, for that to build.

But it does give the presumptive three-peat AL World Series representatives a little something to think about.

On back to back nights in Houston, the Rangers have watched two starters who've been expected to grow into borderline aces struggle to get through five innings. Neftali Feliz could not make it through five due to wildness on Friday night. Derek Holland barely gets there Saturday night — and by the time he does, the Astros have hit three home runs against him and turned a 4-0 deficit into a 5-4 lead.

It may not matter if Yu Darvish continues to get better and better as Nolan Ryan expects, if Feliz and Holland cannot find some inner warrior.

This is one thing that an Astros team that is too young and too roster thin to even dream of contending does have. These Astros of Jim Crane, George Postolos, Luhnow and Brad Mills are fighters. They'll scrap and claw — and hit the dirt when need be. No matter how talented the opponent.

There is something delicious in seeing the Astros flex the mental toughness that a few key players on a two-time World Series team are struggling to locate.

"I think this is a game where we proved a little something to ourselves," says catcher Chris Snyder, the back-home University of Houston product. "The fact that we did it against them?

"Why not?"

Snyder grins. Sometimes it's good to be the overshadowed underdog.

Dirt Warrior

When reporters are let into the Astros' clubhouse, Kanye West's "Don't let me get in my zone," lines from his Watch The Throne collaboration with Jay-Z are blaring from the sound system in the center of the room.

This may not be Brett Myers' choice in music. But if he thinks about it, he'd see it fits. Few have embraced their new old zone better than the starter turned closer (again).

That's easier to see than even the dirt on his uniform.

"We even had Myers tackling a guy to end the game," Snyder says. "We're grinding. That's grinding right there."

It's also night and day from the bullpen horror of 2011. Brandon Lyon helped kill that bullpen in that 106-loss nightmare, with his blown save on Opening Day sounding the alarm on all that was to come. In the Astros' biggest win of 2012, Lyon saves that bullpen — coming on with two on and nobody out in a one-run game to retire three straight batters in the eighth.

"We're The Regulators, man," Myers says. "We've got each other's back."

Whether that requires a pitch or a tackle. By the way, the pitch overshadow by the Great Elvis Chase? That makes Hamilton 1-for-8 in this series so far.

It's good to be a dirt eater.