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The suggestion was meant to help Sonny Gray feel cooler in the heat if not actually be cooler, but it got him thinking about how it might just be so cool to tug up the cuffs, flash the socks, and feel like a kid again.

Teammate Miles Mikolas, a veteran of these sauna starts, told Gray that when it’s hot, exposing the socks “keeps you cooler.� Gray sounded like a skeptic.

Then he made it poetic.

“It’s just taking me back to my roots,� Gray said. “I wore my socks up when I was a kid. I wore my socks up all through high school, my socks up all through college. It’s just taking me back to my roots. That makes me feel like a baseball player, not a pitcher. I’m a baseball player now. Just making baseball plays. I want to be a baseball player.�

With the ringtail tops of his red socks showing for the first time this season, Gray authored seven sterling innings against the Chicago Cubs in a 3-2 victory. As the Cardinals claimed the series against their archrivals, he captured the zeitgeist of the clubhouse at Busch Stadium. They had a blast as baseball players. Catcher Pedro Pages shed the fog of mechanics that have dogged him at the plate and hit a two-run homer — and then threw out a runner in the ninth to secure the one-run win. The Cardinals asked the umpires to keep the Cubs base coaches in the designated areas to avoid peering in or signaling and then had to do the same with their bases coaches, toes to the chalk. Jordan Walker stole second to get in position to score the winning run. Nolan Gorman committed an error that led to a run for the Cubs and then delivered the run that won the game for the Cardinals.

Gray struck out seven, but one of his biggest throws of the evening was to second base to squelch the Cubs’ momentum with a pickoff called by bench coach Daniel Descalso.

Just making baseball plays.

“We had to be on point,� manager Oliver Marmol said. “And the guys were.�

The majority of the players arrived Sunday afternoon, hours before first pitch of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball for an early workout. The Cardinals intended to do their pregame warmup on the field, including batting practice. The torrential rain arrived immediately after their hitters meeting and soon the dugout was flooded. Sandbags were stacked to keep the batting cage dry. Marooned in the clubhouse, the Cardinals treated it like a clubhouse.

They played cards.

They played ping pong.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ watched the golf tournament — and did a lot of it as a group.

“Kept us engaged,� Gray said.

“Kept him loose,� Pages said.

And then, when the storms cleared and the dugout drained, Gray hiked up his cuffs and went to work.

While Cubs starter Shota Imanaga was nearly flawless through six innings, Gray pitched around two baserunners in the first inning and then found his groove and entered the spin cycle. Imanaga struck out the Cardinals in order in the second inning. Gray (11-5) opened the third with an counterpoint — by striking out the side in order and all of them on sweeping sliders.

The only two baserunners Imanaga allowed in the first six innings also scored as the game’s spotlight began to find the batter who drove those runs in — Pages.

“He had a game didn’t he?� Gray said. “He had a game. He had a great game. He made a major impact in this game.�

In addition to calling the game for Gray and later shepherding lefty JoJo Romero through a troublesome ninth for the save, Pages provided the first lead of the game. Thomas Saggese fouled off a couple of pitches from Imanaga to prolong his at-bat and then pull a single to left field for the Cardinals’ first hit. Pages followed by drilling a home run 407 feet toward center field. Pages’ eighth home run of the season staked Gray to a 2-0 lead.

The way Pages described his approach and what he’s trying to rediscover at the plate sounded a lot like a pitcher wearing high socks.

Get back to his roots.

Clear the clutter of data to find the kid.

“I’m trying to get back in the mindset of just get in the box and compete, stop trying to think so much mechanically,� Pages said. “That is something I dove into a lot this year, and it hasn’t benefited me. So I kind of went back into it. Just talking with the hitting guys: ‘Hey man, I just want to compete. Get in the box, forget about everything, and go compete.’�

Be a baseball player.

Make some baseball plays.

In the fourth, Cubs center fielder and speedster Pete Crow-Armstrong singled off Gray. He stole second base to get into scoring position, down by Pages’ homer. Wise to the Cubs’ skullduggery when it came to requesting the base coaches remain in their boxes, the Cardinals also kept an eye on Cubs at second base for gamesmanship. With Crow-Armstrong freshly off his slide to steal second, bench coach Descalso called a pick off. Gray sprang it expertly, and shortstop Masyn Winn applied the tag.

The Cubs didn’t even challenge the out call.

“If you have guys trying to look into your glove or trying to relay signs from second, if you can execute plays like that you can eliminate some of that stuff because they’re not fully engaged,� Gray said. “They’re going to get beat. It was a baseball play that we executed very well.�

Said Marmol: “That killed a lot of momentum.�

The Cubs regained it in the top of the fifth with some help.

Gorman committed a throwing error that allowed Dansby Swanson to reach first. No. 9 hitter Matt Shaw then tagged a two-strike sweeper for a two-run, game-tying homer. The pitch that struck out three batters in the third stayed up and broke into the strike zone against Shaw. But, Gray noted, the game came back around to give one specific Cardinal a chance to undo what he contributed to that inning.

Walker made a baseball play by stealing second.

That gave Gorman, two innings after his error, the two-out shot to retake the lead his throw helped misplace, and Gorman brought balance to his evening.

“That’s the thing about this team,� Gray said. “We’ve had our ups and downs and a (trade) deadline like that. That is the thing. You can also say the same thing about Gorman. Misplays a ball. Then I let the game speed up on me. For him to then two or three innings later have the go-ahead RBI — he picked us up. He feels like he may have let us down. But he picked us up. Same thing with Pedro. He picked us up. That’s just what it is to me.�

With one lefty in the bullpen, Marmol had to be targeted with his use of Romero — and rather than jump to use him against the Cubs’ leadoff hitter Michael Busch he waited for the chance to face All-Star Kyle Tucker. That came in the eighth with a runner on base. Tucker flared a single that put runners at the corners and brought right-handed cleanup hitter Carson Kelly to the plate. Pages guided Romero through an at-bat that tried to tease Kelly into getting himself out, and on a full-count pitch Romero got a groundout to end the inning.

In the ninth, Romero allowed two singles, and either one of them would have tied the score if not for Pages throwing out Jon Berti when he attempted to steal second.

Pages’ caught stealing shows up in the box score.

What doesn’t is how he mellowed the pace in the ninth to keep the inning from hastening on Romero. Marmol credited Pages’ “cadence� and with the tying run at third, Romero remained cooler than a pair of high socks and collected a groundout to end the game.

Baseball players making baseball plays.

“We take our job obviously very seriously,� Pages said. “At the end of the day, it’s just a kids’ game, and we want to go out there and compete. If we can simplify that and just keeping going out there and having fun, we’ll be in a good place.�