ST. LOUIS — There’s always room for a good Chicago Cubs villain in their rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals, from Dusty Baker to Carlos Zambrano to Kris Bryant to Pete Crow-Armstrong, the latest to throw his hat into the ring.

For reasons that can’t be fully explained, St. Louis fans have a strong dislike for Crow-Armstrong that goes above and beyond their normal dislike of Cubs players.

This weekend’s three-game series at Busch Stadium, which ended Sunday night with a 5-1 Cardinals win, gave them a chance to show him exactly how they feel. The general consensus was that Crow-Armstrong was “overrated,” an unoriginal insult they repeatedly chanted when he stepped up to the plate in the eighth inning on Saturday.

Crow-Arnstrong answered back in epic fashion with a 444-foot home run into the mocking group of fans in a section of the right-field bleachers recently dubbed the “Tarps Off” zone. He then celebrated with a bat flip and some histrionics around the bases to let them know he was also thinking of them.

“It’s hard to embarrass a full group of people,” manager Craig Counsell said of Crow-Armstrong’s moment.

But he did, including the young man who caught the ball and couldn’t manage to throw it back on the field from about 15 feet away.

Pete Crow-Armstrong answers St. Louis Cardinals fans’ taunts with a night to remember in Chicago Cubs’ 6-1 win

Crow-Armstrong will no doubt be a target every time he comes to St. Louis the rest of his career, a badge of honor to Cubs fans.

I asked Anthony Rizzo, who worked his first Cubs game Sunday as an on-field analyst for NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” if there was any comparison from his era.

“Probably Kris Bryant,” he said. “But just because he said St. Louis was boring.”

Bryant was the antithesis of Crow-Armstrong. He never executed a bat flip. He didn’t curse. And he never showboated after hitting a home run. Bryant made the off-the-cuff remark about St. Louis to Ryan Dempster during the Cubs Convention in 2019, and was booed every time he stepped to the plate at Busch Stadium on June 1, 2019, in his first game there after the remark.

Even his teammates and manager Joe Maddon jokingly booed Bryant in the dugout to add to the festivities.

“It’s never going to be done,” Bryant admitted afterward. “I get that. But there are only so many times I can answer questions on it. So hammer away. Whaddya got?”

Crow-Armstrong said Saturday, “it’s absolutely easy to feed off” the fan abuse, though he didn’t admit to taunting the “Tarps Off” crowd back by pointing toward the section on his way around the bases and waving his hand in the air like he was waving a T-shirt, as the fans did.

Rizzo said it was a perfect response. When opportunity presented itself, Crow-Armstrong delivered.

“He hit a bomb while they were chanting ‘overrated,’ so it was just perfect timing,” Rizzo said. “I think whenever a player gives fans ammunition, it’s fun for the fans. The player is going to have to wear it for the rest of his time here. He’s probably going to fail more than he succeeds, because that’s just the way the game is, but it’s all in good fun.

“As long as he keeps it all in good fun. I think it’s really good for the fan bases.”

Being the target of collective rage is not really such a bad thing in sports. Dennis Rodman made a good living off it, as have many other athletes.

Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman, who has been booed all over baseball for being a part of the sign-stealing Houston Astros team that won a World Series, can vouch for that. Like Bryant, he’s not a player who calls attention to himself, but was handed the role of villain like several other Astros stars, including Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa.

Bregman was booed every at-bat when the Cubs played in Texas last month.

“It’s fun,” Bregman said Sunday. “It kind of puts you in that mode.”

What mode is that?

“Go mode,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Bregman said he’s delivered in similar moments “probably about 50 times” in his career.

“It’s what the game is about,” he said. ‘It makes the games fun. It’s a good rivalry.”

The “Tarps Off” brigade chanted “cheater” Sunday as Bregman batted in the sixth. He cranked a home run to left, his fifth of the season, to cut the Cubs’ deficit to 5-1. But that was the only scoring for the Cubs, who went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position to finish the road trip 3-4.

The Cubs ended May with a 13-15 record, despite starting 8-0, and have not won a series since sweeping Cincinnati on May 4-7, going 0-6-1.

Jordan Wicks allowed three runs in two innings in what Counsell said afterward was a scheduled bullpen day, and the Cardinals never had to sweat after leading 5-0 after three innings. Matthew Boyd threw four innings for Triple-A Iowa on Sunday and possibly could return next weekend from his meniscus surgery, though Counsell declined to reveal the plan until they see Boyd in Chicago.

Crow-Armstrong was 1-for-4 on a quiet night, batting second behind Nico Hoerner. The revenge of Crow-Armstrong on Saturday brought to mind some other recent villains in the Cubs-Cards rivalry, like Zambrano, who seemed to lose his control when Jim Edmonds batted and was hated in St. Louis. Rizzo insisted he never felt like a villain in St. Louis and was mostly treated with respect.

But he was part of some famous moments. It was back in 2015 that Cardinals pitcher Matt Belisle plunked Rizzo in a game in an apparent retaliatory move that sent manager Joe Maddon into orbit.

“I have no history with the Cardinals except I used to love them growing up,” Maddon ranted after the game. “That really showed me a lot today in a negative way. I don’t know who put out the hit. I don’t know if Tony Soprano is in the dugout. I didn’t see him in there. But we’re not going to put up with it, from them or anybody else.”

Tony Soprano, in this instance, was Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, a disciple of Tony La Russa. No one helped fuel the rivalry more than La Russa and Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who once traded profanities from opposite dugouts in a 2003 game at Wrigley Field after Baker accused pitcher Matt Morris of throwing at Cubs hitters.

“Really, if he thinks (the fight) has been on so far, he’s got a whole decade full of us coming,” Baker said that day. “This is just the beginning. They’ve been beating up on us for a long time, from my understanding, so the best thing for him to do is just leave us alone. Just play your game and be quiet.”

Baker became an instant villain in St. Louis, but was so cool and confident he didn’t care what anyone in the ballpark thought of him.

Crow-Armstrong has a long career ahead of him and is unlikely to change his demeanor whenever he plays in Busch Stadium, or elsewhere for that matter.

“I think Pete is just being himself,” Counsell said. “This is just who he is. You’ve got to be yourself as a player, and Pete is. Some people need drama in their life. I’m not saying Pete does … But Pete likes the emotional part of the game, and it’s good for him.

“And he has to show it, too. He has to let it out. And it’s not always good, but it’s him being himself and that’s the most important thing.”