CHICAGO — Get ready to see some playoff baseball at Wrigley Field, Cubs fans.

The Cubs officially will host the NL Wild Card Series next week, as they clinched the top wild-card seed Saturday with a 7-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

“It’s a really good feeling,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said after the win. “Certainly getting it done today was important.

“Why is it important? I think, really, to me, it’s mostly about the people that support us on a for 81 games, being able to see us play again. That’s really important, and that’s really special.”

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That means the San Diego Padres will head to Chicago’s North Side for a best-of-three series that begins Tuesday at Wrigley Field.

That’s a big advantage for the Cubs. They are one of the better road squads in baseball (42-39), but they still are a stronger team at home (49-31).

The Padres, meanwhile, are significantly better at home (50-29) than they are on the road (38-43).

“We’ve played really well at home this year,” Jameson Taillon, Saturday’s starter, said. “I think the fans are a big part of that. I think the day games are a big part of that. I think learning the conditions and embracing the wind and the sun and all of that. Wrigley’s definitely, I think, one of the best home field advantages in sports. We’ve kind of seen it all this year. We’ve been challenged to win a lot of different ways, and I think that that really helps us.

“On San Diego, they’re really good at home, too. So it’s always important to play in front of your fans, but I think this was a battle of both of us really wanting to play at home, because we’re both really good at home. I’m excited to be able to play here.”

Immediately after clinching a postseason spot, the Cubs turned their attention toward their next goal: Hosting playoff games at Wrigley Field. That was the message Counsell sent his team, and after a five-game losing streak, the Cubs righted the ship and locked up home-field advantage.

“I think playing here for visiting teams is tough for a number of reasons,” Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said earlier this month. “It’s super fun for us. Being able to give these fans October baseball, that’s going to be real special. It’s going to be special for me, experiencing it for the first time, and then Ian [Happ], being able to be back and doing it again.

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“I just think that’s hugely important. We know how to play ball here. We love embracing everything that comes with this place.”

The Cubs have talked all season about the energy Wrigley Field brings the team and how much support they feel from the fans.

This will be the first time the Cubs host a playoff series with fans in attendance since 2018, when they played the Colorado Rockies in the NL Wild Card Game (back when it was only one game, not a series). The Cubs hosted the Miami Marlins during a wild-card series in 2020, but fans only were in attendance on the rooftops outside the stadium.

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Fans became accustomed to postseason games at the corner of Clark and Addison after the Cubs made it to three consecutive NL Championship Series from 2015 to 2017. Crow-Armstrong remembers seeing that on TV – but it doesn’t compare to being there in person.

“The TV screens have never really done justice to what this place [is] actually like,” Crow-Armstrong said on Saturday. “I mostly remember just watching it with my dad and seeing some real raw emotion from him. Definitely didn’t do it justice on TV, what this place is actually like.”

If the Cubs advance beyond the wild-card round, they would head to Milwaukee to face the top-seeded Brewers in the best-of-five NLDS.