ST. LOUIS\u2013On a night when the St. Louis Cardinals enshrined two franchise icons and the club\u2019s winningest lefthanded pitcher in team history into its Hall of Fame, two former Cardinals players factored into a come-from-behind 6-5 win for the Chicago White Sox Saturday at Busch Stadium.<\/p>\n
Former Cardinals outfielder Randal Grichuk hit a two-run, two-out homer in the ninth off St. Louis closer Riley O\u2019Brien, giving former Cardinals closer Jordan Hicks the win for Chicago, which snapped a four-game losing streak in front of 40,387 fans.<\/p>\n
Grichuk\u2019s shot spoiled a celebratory evening for 40,387 fans, who turned out to see Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Bill Sherdel enshrined into the Cardinals Hall of Fame in a pregame ceremony that mixed humor, humility and tears.<\/p>\n
Molina asked the training staff to come out and give him a Cardinals hat to wear backwards and eyeblack to go with his new red jacket in the longest set of remarks, which were full of emotion when talking about his baseball journey, and how it was intertwined with Pujols.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen my dad asked you to please take care of me, you said to him, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, I got him,\u2019\u201d Molina said. \u201cFrom that moment, you were there for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both men, cornerstones of the 2006 and 2011 World Series champions, paid tribute to Cardinals fans. The ceremony is normally held at Ballpark Village but was moved to Busch Stadium in anticipation of large crowds. Many in attendance will not be able to make it to Cooperstown next summer, when Pujols is expected to be a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer, and could be joined by Molina.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou support me through the highs and lows and you make St. Louis feel like home. The passion, the loyalty, and the love you have for Cardinal baseball are unlike anything else in sport. That’s why you have the title the best fans in baseball,\u201d Pujols said.
Bill Sherdel, who was a mainstay of the club\u2019s first World Series winner in 1926, passed away in 1968. His grandson John spoke on behalf of the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis honor belongs to you, but tonight it also reminds us how blessed we are to call you ours,\u201d John Sherdel said. He said his grandfather shied away from talking about his exploits.<\/p>\n
Bernal, one of Molina\u2019s heirs and a\u00a0 rookie catcher playing in his first homestand at Busch Stadium, teared up while getting Kyle Leahy warmed up in the bullpen during the ceremony, Berrnal said through interpreter Kleininger Teran. The way that he played the game, the toughness that he have, everything that he did for this organization\u2026.he left a lot of things behind and he teached me a lot of things and that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to do.\u201d Bernal said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS\u2013On a night when the St. Louis Cardinals enshrined two franchise icons and the club\u2019s winningest lefthanded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[3979,64,63,460097,591,44,85,5887,2366],"class_list":["post-890497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-associated-press","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gregg-palermo","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}