Cubs honor Pujols and Molina in big series loss to Cardinals

The Chicago Cubs just played a very interesting series with the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals are a significantly better team than the Cubs but the Cubs went into Thursday’s game with a chance to win a five-game series.

The five games were played over four days from Monday through Thursday with a doubleheader on Tuesday. This is the last time that the Chicago Cubs’ rival will come to Wrigley Field in 2022 so the Cubs took the opportunity to honor some great players.

For a very long time, the Chicago Cubs have played host to guys like Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina. Of course, Pujols spent a lot of time with the Los Angeles Angels too but the bulk of his Hall of Fame career came with St. Louis.

There was a nice little ceremony before Thursday’s game where the Cubs paid a tribute to these two as they are hanging them up after the season comes to an end. It was a very nice gesture as the two have been fierce rivals for a very long time.

The Chicago Cubs hosted the St. Louis Cardinals one last time on Thursday.

Each of their charities is going to get contributions as a result of a donation made by the Chicago Cubs as well. That is about as classy as you can get, especially when you are talking about a rivalry like this that has been amazing over the last 20 years.

The big news surrounding Pujols right now is his home run chase. He hit his 693rd home run earlier in the series and now is only seven away from that big 700 home run milestone.

He is also only three away from Alex Rodriguez’s total for fourth most in MLB history. He has certainly hit a lot of those against the Chicago Cubs.

Once this part of the day was over, there was a game to be played. As mentioned before, the series was tied but the Cardinals took a big 8-3 win to secure it. Paul Goldschmidt hit two home runs in the contest to lead them to victory.

Marcus Stroman made the start for the Cubs and he was not good at all. He gave up 11 hits, two walks, and five runs over 5.0 innings pitched. On the other side, Dakota Hudson went 7.0 innings where he only allowed two runs on five hits.

This was a tough loss for the Chicago Cubs as they had a chance to take the series against the top team in their division fighting for that division title but they couldn’t get it done. Now, they will have a chance to help the Cardinals as they head to Wisconsin to take on the Milwaukee Brewers.

This is a series that a lot of people will remember for a long time. It was nice to see the Cubs honor two very good rivals in the way that they did but it would have been even better for them if they got the win in the meantime.