The Cubs and Cardinals were headed into Sunday afternoon at Wrigley Field with the series on the line, and ABC had the rubber match nationally. Chicago had won Friday, St. Louis had answered on Saturday, and the finale gave the rivalry its cleanest possible setup: one game to settle the series.
That is why Hunter Dobbins is in the picture now. When a matchup between The Cubs and The Cardinals lands on ABC Sunday, it is not just another spot on the calendar; it is the kind of game that turns a regular-season weekend into a national event. The Cubs and Cardinals were being shown as the greatest rivalry in baseball, Midwest Style, with each side carrying a different burden into the afternoon.
Friday belonged to The Cubs, who opened the series with a win and a Seiya Suzuki home run. Saturday flipped the script. The Cardinals took the second game, and Joshua Báez did the damage in emphatic fashion, hitting three home runs to force a decider. That made Sunday the rubber match by definition: the third game of a short series after each club had already taken one of the first two.
The stakes were bigger than the series itself. The Cubs were trying to chase the Brewers for the division, while the Cardinals were trying to eke out wins to stay alive for a wild card spot in October. With about six and a half weeks left in the 2026 regular season, every result carried a little more weight, especially one staged on a national broadcast.
There was also a quieter layer to the Cubs’ week. They had added a right-handed platoon bat at the trade deadline, a move that fit the broader idea that controllable pitching was pricy this deadline and the club had chosen to invest in tomorrow. The new right-hander’s signature pitch is his sinker, and Matthew Boyd would seem to have earned it, a reminder that roster choices and September urgency are starting to blur together.
For readers who follow the recurring Bingo card feature around these national games, the formula is simple: the card is a checklist of moments, patterns and outcomes that a featured matchup can deliver, and a good one usually gets to the end before the game does. Sunday had all the ingredients for that kind of read. What the game did not yet supply was the ending itself, and that is the only part that still mattered when the first pitch arrived at Wrigley Field.
