MEMPHIS, Tennessee – A sellout crowd of 10,220 packed AutoZone Park in downtown Memphis Thursday night to see a 9-3 win by the St. Louis Cardinals over the Memphis Redbirds in a “Battle of the Birds” exhibition game.
With tonight’s crowd, a total of 19,691 fans have filed through the ballpark for the last two professional games played, counting a crowd of 9,471 for the Gildan Triple-A National Championship Game last Sept. 20.
The win was the Cardinals’ sixth-straight in exhibition games against the Redbirds, after Memphis won two of the first three with a tie sandwiched in between.
The Cardinals scored five runs in the first inning, two more in the second and another in the third to open an 8-0 lead after two-and-a-half frames. Jhonny Peralta and Yadier Molina hit back-to-back home runs in the first, Aledmys Diaz added one in the second, and Jedd Gyorko blasted one out in the third to account for most of the offense on the night.
Memphis hit a couple of home runs of its own, when Blake Drake and Alex Mejia went back-to-back off Josh Lucas in the eighth.
