Cardinals Extend Streak at Home

A healthy Jim Edmonds is making a big contribution to the St. Louis Cardinals’ perfect homestand.

Edmonds homered for the fourth game in a row and Jeff Suppan worked six strong innings, helping the Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2, Saturday for their eighth consecutive victory. The Cubs have lost five in a row.

Edmonds missed five starts in center field at the end of last month and early July with a groin injury, but the team has clicked since his return.

“I think those couple of days off helped a lot,” Edmonds said. “I’m just trying to stay in the lineup and do my job.”

The Central Division leaders, who are 8-0 on their homestand with one game to go before the All-Star break, have won 10 straight at home overall. They have a league-best 54 victories.

Manager Tony La Russa wants to make sure nobody relaxes.

“We barely won that game,” La Russa said. “Especially in the Central, you cannot have an easy series. We’re in the same position we’ve been in for a while ... Keep pushing, keep the edge, keep cranking, all that stuff that sounds a little corny but it’s absolutely the mind-set we have to have.”

Suppan (8-5) yielded two runs and seven hits in six innings with five strikeouts and no walks. In his last three starts, he is 2-0 with a 1.69 earned-run average.

The game drew a standing-room crowd of 50,569, the largest regular-season attendance since the team removed several thousand seats and installed a manually operated scoreboard in 1997. The previous best was Friday night’s crowd of 49,675.