NEW YORK - Endy Chavez made a catch that’s likely to have a long life on postseason highlight reels. Three innings later, it didn’t mean too much to the New York Mets.

Chavez’s running, leaping grab of Scott Rolen’s drive well above the left-field wall kept Game 7 of the NL championship series tied in the sixth inning.

But there was nothing Chavez could do to stop Yadier Molina’s two-run, ninth-inning homer into the bullpen, which gave the St. Louis Cardinals a 3-1 victory over the New York Mets on Thursday night and a trip to the World Series.

“After he made that catch, I was feeling like, man, we cannot lose this ballgame,” Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran said.

Chavez’s catch will be shown over and over by the Mets at Shea Stadium and at the new ballpark being built in the parking lot, like Ron Swoboda’s and Tommy Agee’s grabs against Baltimore in the 1969 World Series.

“See the ball, see the wall and do the thing that I’ve got to do,” Chavez said. “I jumped as high as I can — like a 10 percent chance in my mind I could catch it. I had to improvise.”

Given the score and the game, it will be ranked among the greatest grabs in postseason history.

“That,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said, “will be replayed forever.”

Mets starter Oliver Perez had just walked Jim Edmonds with one out in the sixth, and manager Willie Randolph made a trip to the mound for the second straight inning.

Rolen then sent the next pitch soaring toward the Cardinals’ bullpen in left field. Chavez, starting because regular left fielder Cliff Floyd re-injured his left Achilles’ tendon in last week’s opener, ran across the outfield grass and the warning track like an Olympic sprinter and jumped while still on a full run.

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With his elbow at the top of the 8-foot-fence and his black Rawlings mitt high above, he snagged the ball at the top of the glove’s webbing, the white of the ball still visible, a classic baseball “ice cream cone.”

On the blue wall were words from an insurance advertisement: “THE STRENGTH TO BE THERE.”

“I knew it was going to be tough because it wasn’t too high and it was kind of like a line drive, so it’s going to carry very fast to the fence,” the 6-foot Chavez said.

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At first, he wasn’t sure whether he had come up with the ball.

“I had to check because my glove almost went out of my hand,” he said. “I didn’t know if I kept it inside or I just put in the air. I didn’t know where the ball was. When I saw the ball inside, I checked Edmonds, where he was, and I saw he was past second base.”

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Chavez then threw to second baseman Jose Valentin, who doubled up Edmonds at first. The Shea Stadium crowd let out a huge roar that continued until the bottom half of the sixth began, bringing Chavez out for two curtain calls. Most of the Mets who had been on the field congregated near first base to congratulate Chavez.

Shea Stadium rocked. At that point, it seemed like the Mets could do no wrong.

“Nobody can touch us,” Chavez thought to himself.

Just more than 1½ hours later, it was all for naught.