CHICAGO — The importance of the home run to history was obvious when even a bleacher creature at Wrigley Field didn’t dare follow tradition and toss that baseball back on the field.
The importance of the homer to the moment was clear on the scoreboard.
Albert Pujols led off the seventh inning with a solo homer and gave Cardinals lefty Jordan Montgomery the only run he’d need on his way to a complete-game shutout. Pujols’ 693rd career home run led the way for a first in Montgomery’s big-league career. The lefty had never pitched in the ninth inning of a game before completing a 1-0 one-hitter against the Cubs on Monday at Wrigley Field.
Montgomery faced one batter over the minimum, getting 27 outs from 28 Cubs.
In his first start in the Midwest’s oldest baseball rivalry, Montgomery continued his unbeaten run since coming to the Cardinals at the trade deadline. Montgomery has won all four starts he’s made for the Cardinals, and he’s yet to allow more than a run in any of them. The lefty’s career night at Wrigley included retiring the final 19 batters he faced.
Nick Madrigal, the final batter of the game, skipped a grounder that allowed a fitting completion to Montgomery’s gem.
Pujols, who provided the only run, gloved the grounder and flipped to Montgomery, who beat Madrigal to first base for the final out.
It came on Montgomery’s 99th pitch.
He had no problem making the play.
The Cardinals took an unusual route to their eighth consecutive win. It wasn’t the burst of offense they got in Arizona. They generated little offense against the Cubs pitchers and did not get a runner safely to second base until Pujols past it on his way home with the game’s first run.
A few hours after sharing the National League’s player of the week award with teammate Paul Goldschmidt, Pujols added to his streak of record-setting, record-breaking, or just game-altering swings. Pujols’ homer Monday came on a pitch at shoulder level and he socked it into the left-field bleachers. It was his sixth in his past seven games, and each one as stoked the notion that he could reach and surpass 700 for his career. He is within three of tying Alex Rodriguez’s 696 for the fourth-most all time, and with seven more he’ll become the fourth player in Major League Baseball history to reach 700.
The homer was Pujols’ 30th at Wrigley Field in his 98th game.
It was not the first Pujols home run ball the bleachers didn’t catch and release.
He has hit some onto the street around the ballpark, after all.
