(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and Adam Wainwright walked off the field together in the fifth inning of Sunday’s game against the Pirates, the last regular season game Pujols and Molina will play.  Wainwright, who has struggled in the last month of the season, has not announced if he’ll be back next year.

Pujols hit one more for the home folks, his 702^nd home run, then added his 703^rd last night in the sixth inning in Pittburgh, putting him past Babe Ruth into second place in the all-time runs batted in list (only Hank Aaron has more).

His 24 home runs in his final year is the most homers he’s had in  season since he hit 31 for the California Angels in 2016.

The Cardinals lost to the Pirates in St. Louis Sunday, then headed to Pittsburgh for the last three games of the regular season. The Cardinals went into the last series of the regular season with a chance to finish above .500 on the road. They were 39-39 going in.

AARON JUDGE was in a tie with Roger Maris for the American League home run record as the Yankees opened a four-game final series with the Rangers. Judge got his 61^st home run last week.  Roger Maris Jr., says Judge should be considered the Major League home run record-holder if he gets his 62^nd homer before the season’s end.  Maris says Bobby Bonds’ 73 homers and the 70 hit by Mark McGwire should be in a separate category because both used performance-enhancing drugs.  Maris says Major League Baseball “should do the right thing” and consider Judge the home run king if he gets to 62.

Maris has become more vocal as Judge has approached his dad’s American League record. Many might remember that, in 1998, he had no qualms celebrating McGwire’s year.

As far as Judge is concerned, Bonds deserves the crown.

PLAYOFFS—The playoffs begin Friday.  The Cardinals entered their last series not knowing who their opponent would be in the best-of-three game series.

(NASCAR)—Finally, a playoff driver has won a playoff race.  Chase Elliott is the first playoff contender to lock in a position in the next round of the playoffs by winning a race, in this case a thriller at Talladega. Elliott got a last-lap push from Erik Jones to gain a slight edge on Ryan Blaney and led Blaney to the finish line by less than .05 of a second.

It’s Elliott’s fifth win of the season, the most of any driver.  The race became a two-lap shootout after Daniel Hemeric stopped on the track with engine trouble.  “It was a wild last couple laps,” Elliott said. Elliott was the last of seventeen drivers to lead the race, which featured 57 lead changes, the most in any single race this year. And the win is a big relief to him.  After crashing out of the previous race at Texas and finishing 32^nd, Elliott went into the race 8^th in points. Only eight drivers will transition into the semifinal round after next weekend’s race on the Charlotte Roval (combination of oval and road course). He’s the first playoff contender to win a playoff race this year.  Non-contenders had swept the first four races.

Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe are tied for the eighth playoff spot.  William Byron and Christopher Bell also are on the outside looking in.  Alex Bowman skipped the Talladega race because of a concussion he suffered at Texas the previous week. He’ll be re-evaluated this week to see if he can run at Charlotte but he is so far behind in the points standings that he will need a victory to advance.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has announced a 17-race schedule for 2023 with several of the races within reach of Missourians, depending on where they live.

The season begins, as usual, on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5. They’ll race at the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2, run the Indianapolis road course on May 13 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28^th. The series returns to the Iowa Speedway for a double-header on July 22-23, then goes to Nashville on August 6 and back to the Indianapolis road course on the 12^th.  The drivers will return to World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis on August 27^th for the 15^th race of the season and, if the past is an indicator of the future, the championship chase tight going into the last two races of the yearThey’ll race at the Texas Motor Speedway on April 2, run the Indianapolis road course on May 13 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28^th. The series returns to the Iowa Speedway for a double-header on July 22-23, then goes to Nashville on August 6 and back to the Indianapolis road course on the 12^th.  The drivers will return to World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis on August 27^th for the 15^th race of the season and, if the past is an indicator of the future, the championship chase tight going into the last two races of the year.

FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez picked up a history win in the Grand Prix of Singapore, becoming the first driver since 2011 to win both of Formula 1’s street races in the same year. He won at Monaco earlier. He also became the 58^th driver in F1 history to lead flag to flag.

Ferrari failed to win for the sixth race in a row but its drivers, Charles LeClerc and Carlos Sainz took the two podium positions behind Perez.

Season points leader Max Verstappen saw his five-straight wins streak snapped. He had a poor start, spun during the race, and finished 7^th.

The race was the 350^th grand prix start for two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso, the first driver to achieve that number of races.  Unfortunately, he was unable to finish.

Five races remain in the Formula 1 schedule.

(Baseball)—Albert got his.  Judge has ten games left to get his.   Landmark home runs.

Albert Pujols ended the suspense and the run to 700 home runs with two of them off two Dodger pitchers Friday night, running his season total to 21. It’s the fourth multi-homer game for him since turning 42, the most by player 42 or older in major league history.

The San Francisco Giants, in the field during their game against the Diamondbacks, stopped the action to watch him hit 700.  It is his 18th season with 20 or more homers. Only Henry Aaron and Bobby Bonds have more (Bonds, 19 and Aaron 20)

He didn’t get the ball back and that’s fine with him. The fan who caught it got it certified by MLB officials and left the stadium.  We’ve heard him say something similar before:

“Souvenirs are for the fans. I don’t have any problem if they want to keep it. If they want to give it back, that’s great. But at the end of the day, I don’t focus on material stuff.”

Babe Ruth is next and out of reach with eight games left.

AARON JUDGE heads into the last ten games on the Yankees schedule stuck on 60 home runs.  His last blast was September 20.  He needs two to break Roger Maris’ 61-year old American League record of 61. Judge, who is 30, is unlikely to join Pujols in the 700 home run club. He would have to average about 49 homers a year in the next decade to get there.

His home runs might be overshadowing the extraordinary season he is otherwise having.  Through the weekend he was hitting .314, with 128 runs batted in. However, his 165 strikeouts are the highest since his rookie season when he fanned 208 times (while hitting 52 home runs).  He has 99 walks this year, the most since 127 in that rookie year.

UPDATE:  Cardinals head into the closing days of the season with 65 losses.  The Royals head into the closing days of the season with 63 wins.

(NASCAR)—Bigger news, probably, than the latest scramble that was the latest Cup playoff race is word that Jimmie Johnson is done as a fulltime driver, regardless of whether the car has fenders.  Johnson announced yesterday. His retirement leaves the 48-INDYCAR seat open at Chip Ganassi Racing. Ganassi says the door will be open for Johnson’s return, perhaps for a second shot at the Indianapolis 500.

Johnson, approachable and chatting with fans before the start of the INDYCAR race at World Wide Technologies Raceway near St. Louis, won seven NASCAR championships, five of them in a row, driving the number 48 for Hendrick Motorsports.

Johnson has been promised continued sponsorship support from Carvana for whatever kind of racing he wants to do in ’23. Johnson has indicated he’d like to run the 24 Hours of LeMans but hasn’t said if he’d like another shot at Indianapolis.  But, at 47, he says he realizes the value of more time for himself, wife Chani and daughters Evie and Lydia.

Johnson’s INDYCAR career seldom saw him competitive, especially on road courses. His best finish in any race in the two years on the circuit was fifth in one of the double-headers at Iowa Speedway.

(NASCAR—THE CUP)—Tyler Reddick waited a week too long to win a NASCAR playoff race this year.  He was one of four drivers eliminated after the first three playoff races.  But race four in the playoffs was his to take.  And he took it.

(Reddick with fans in the pits before the NASCAR race at Indianapolis this year)

Reddick’s victory at Texas is his first on an oval course.  He has two road-course wins. Reddick had moved to the point on the 281^st of the 334 laps, gave up the led during last pit stops to Joey Logano, but took the lead back after one lap and beat Logano to the finish by 1.2 seconds. He admitted being concerned about his tires as the laps wound down in a race where tire failures again spoiled several drivers’ days and were a major contributed to the record number of yellow flags—16.

Playoff points leader Chase Elliott was leading when “something came apart,” and he went into the wall, ending his day in 32^nd place and dropping from first to ninth in the playoff standings.  He’s now just four points above the cut line to advance to the final eight in two more races.

Christopher Bell, the only playoff driver with top fives in the first three playoff races, also was a tire victim. He started the race as the sixth-seed and dropped to 11^th in the playoff standings after tire trouble put him 34^th at the end.

Martin Truex Jr., and Kevin Harvick also had tire problems while leading.

Chaotic races such as this one often gives drivers usually found in mid-to-back of the field a chance to finish far above their status—Justin Haley, for example, was third, ahead of playoff drivers Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe,

If drivers and fans are looking for a reduced-chaos race, they’ll have to wait past this weekend when the NASCAR show goes to the high banks of Talladega.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy)

(BASEBALL)—Some teams are watching their magic numbers dwindle for pennant-clinching.  But many fans are waiting to see magic numbers for two great hitters, one in the full flower of his career and the other watching the shadows move closer.

(PUJOLS)—Albert Pujols continues to add drama to each home run as he heads toward 700 for his career.  Friday night, with his team down by two runs, Pujols blasted a 427-foot shot into the left field stands for number 698.  Five of his six recent home runs either have tied games or given the Cardinals the lead as they went into this week with a magic number of their own: eight.

His renaissance since the all-Star break has been a key in the St. Louis drive for a divisional championship. In games in which Pujols has homered, the Cardinals are 15-1.

Baseball being a game of statistics, here are some about Pujols going into the last 14 games of his career.  His home run off the Reds’ Raynel Espinel was the 89^th first-pitch homer of his career.  He has ten more when the count is 1-1 and 92 when he took the first pitch for a ball.

Raynel is the 453^rd pitcher to give up a Pujols home run. Pujols hit the first pitch he saw from Espinal for a home run Friday. It was the 89th first-pitch home run of Pujols’ career. The only counts where he’s hit more home runs have come on 1-1 (99 HRs) and 1-0 (92).

His home run off Espinal was his 49^th career home run against the Reds.  He has 62 against the Astros, 59 against the Cubs and another 54 against the Pirates.

He admits he’s feeding off the excitement of the crowd.  “I can feel that energy,” he said Sunday, “and when I’m going out there and performing, I’m going out here to represent God, this organization, and also my country.  I want to make my country proud every single day that I step onto that field.”

(JUDGE)—Sometime this week, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge is likely to catch former Cardinal outfielder Roger Maris’s American League home run record.

It’s a record often overlooked because of the overall record set first by the Cardinals Mark McGwire and then eclipsed by Barry Bonds of the Giants.

But Maris’ record set 61 years ago this year, is likely to fall to Judge, who upped his total to 59 Sunday with two homers against the Brewers.  Judge brushes off repeated questions about whether can do it. “We’ve got some big games coming up. That’s really the only thing on my mind,” he said Sunday night.

Maris took a lot of heat in 1961 about whether his 61 home runs really beat Babe Ruth’s 34-year old record of 60. That was the first year the American League went to the 162-game schedule. The National League followed suit in 1962.  Baseball commissioner Ford Frick decided Maris did not really break The Babe’s record because he didn’t hit number 61 until the 162^nd game. He ordered an asterisk attached the Maris record because Ruth set his record in a 154-game season.

As of the end of Sunday’s games, the Yankees had played 146 games.  Judge is on course to break the Maris record—and the Ruth record.

However, if you want to get picky about it, Ruth only played 151 games in 1927.

Many do not remember (it has been sixty years and more, after all) that Maris bracketed his Yankee years by playing for both Missouri teams.  He was traded by the then-Cleveland Indians to the Kansas City Athletics in 1968 and after the 1959 season went to the Yankees.  He played his last two seasons in St. Louis, 1967-68.

(THE SEASON RECORD)—To update you on the question we asked last week: Will the Royals win more games this year than the Cardinals lose?  After Sunday’s game, the Royals were 58-89. The cardinals were 87-61.

(NASCAR)—The chaotic first round of NASCAR playoffs has come to a chaotic end with Chris Buescher winning the night race at Bristol, ending a 222-race winless streak and giving Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing its first checkered flag.

The last time the once-proud Roush Racing organization won a Cup rate was July, 2017. Roush Racing became Roush-Fenway in 2007 when the Fenway Sports Group bought in, It added the “K” this year when driver Brad Keselowski bought in.

For a time it appeared Keselowski would be the one to claim the teams’ first win.  But a flat tie with 87 laps to go took him out of the lead. He finished 13^th.

Buescher is the third non-playoff driver to win a race in the three-race first round of the playoffs, a first-time record.  He’s the 19^th driver to win a race this year, the most in a half-century.  He took the lead from Christopher Bell with 61 laps left and held off Chase Elliott the rest of the way.

The race eliminated four competitors from the playoffs.  2014 champion Kevin Harvick, needing a win, was in contention until a tire change problem in his last pit stop dropped him to tenth.  Two-time champion Kyle Busch, clinging to a playoff spot, lost an engine for the second time in three races and finished 34^th.  Childress Racing teammates Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were caught in a 12-car wreck just past the halfway point. Dillon was 31^st and Reddick kept going to finish 25^th.

Chase Elliott, who finished about a half-second behind Buescher, goes into the second three-race series of playoffs as the top seed. Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Bell, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, and rookie Austin Cindric  make up the rest of the field.

The first race of round two will be at the Texas Motor Speedway.

(INDYCAR)—Hopes of INDYCAR driver Colton Herta that he might be in Formula 1 next year have been dashed by F1’s administrative body, prompting strong criticism from both INDYCAR and Formula 1 drivers and teams.

F1 relies on a points system to determine who can have a Superlicense to compete.  The system requires 40 points and Herta has only 32. Despite efforts by Red Bull, the dominant F1 team this year, to get a waiver for Herta, administrators have refused.

Herta, how 22, won his first INDYCAR race four years ago at 18, the youngest driver in INDYCAR history to win in the series.  He drives for Andretti Autosport, which had hoped to get permission to run an F1 team in 2023. But that bid was rejected by the sanctioning body and by other teams. McLaren signed Herta as a development driver for 2022, giving him opportunities to practice in Formula 1 cars.  Alfa Tauri had considered providing a seat for him next year. But all of those efforts have gone by the boards.

Herta will remain with Andretti in the INDYCAR series in 2023.  He had a win, two poles, five top five finishes, and eight top tens to finish in a tie for 9^th in the final standings.

(Photo credits; Bob Priddy, Jim Coleman)