Overrated? Pete Crow-Armstrong quiets Cardinals’ shirtless ‘Tarps Off’ fans with huge homer, sliding catch

ST. LOUIS – This time, Pete Crow-Armstrong let his bat and his glove do the talking.

The Cubs’ star center fielder grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons earlier this month, when he responded to a heckling White Sox fan with vulgar language that was captured on camera, went viral and earned him a hefty fine.

Confronted with more heckling this weekend in another rival ballpark, Crow-Armstrong took a different route – specifically one around the bases.

Bombarded with booing and “overrated” chants, Crow-Armstrong silenced Cardinals fans with a 444-foot home run in the eighth inning of Saturday’s 6-1 Cubs win, sending the baseball right into the laps of the worst offenders: the hard-to-miss section of shirtless attendees in Busch Stadium’s right-field bleachers.

“I was hearing them all yesterday and all today,” he said. “They’ve got like hundreds of shirtless guys out in right field. Interesting theme for the year, but they’re rowdy and they’re showing up. They’re buying into something, so I can appreciate it. They don’t really rest for nine innings. I guess that’s what they’re there to do.”

After the blast – the hardest hit ball of his career, at 114.6 miles an hour – Crow-Armstrong rounded first base and pointed out to right field, seemingly at the so-called “Tarps Off” section that had given him grief, right?

“Just to the Cubs fans out there,” he said, stone-faced, when asked who he was pointing to.

Plenty of Cubs fans did make the trip down I-55, and Crow-Armstrong gave them plenty to be happy about Saturday. He was on base five times, was a triple shy of the cycle, scored twice and drove in a couple runs.

In the at-bat that followed his homer, the “overrated” chants from Cardinals fans were replaced by “P-C-A” chants from Cubs fans. Then he knocked in a run with a base hit, and the chants got real loud.

What side of the Mississippi was this again?

But the most impressive Crow-Armstrong moment of the night might have been the sliding catch he made in left-center field on the final play of the game, seemingly covering the width of the Gateway Arch to make the grab.

“That last play, that was crazy,” righty starter Ben Brown said. “It’s really fun to watch him do his thing. He wants to win. He wants to play hard. It’s awesome when he’s doing that and putting on a show. It’s really cool to watch. We’re all thankful to have Pete over there in center field.”

“He’s in a place where nobody [else is] getting to that stuff,” manager Craig Counsell said.

On a night like this, it was hard to think of Crow-Armstrong as the “overrated” player Cardinals fans accused him of being.

But however you feel like rating Crow-Armstrong, it’s no secret that he hasn’t produced at the level that made him an All Star during the first half of last season. After 25 homers and an .847 OPS before the break last year, he had just six home runs and a .634 OPS in the second half. He came into Saturday with six homers and a .676 OPS in 58 games this season.

A big night was just what the doctor ordered.

“It’s been a grind day in and day out,” he said. “Today I just wanted to go out and be a kid and play baseball with my friends.

“That was a blast. … I need more of that in my day-to-day, just remembering that this is fun, even when we go through tough stretches and whatnot, not taking myself too seriously.”

This was the Crow-Armstrong who looks deserving of the top spot in the batting order, the Crow-Armstrong who looks deserving of his big-money contract extension. This was the Crow-Armstrong from the first half of last season.

Does this buy him a brief escape from the weight of expectations?

“He had a wonderful game. He swung the bat really, really well,” Counsell said. “Do it tomorrow.”