Second City October: Bayside Heartbreak

This piece, written by BP Wrigleyville’s Ken Schultz,  forms part of our in-house coverage of the Cubs in the playoffs, “Second City October.” Additional Game Two coverage can be found here.

That was definitely a postseason classic.

Before I dive deeper into it, here’s a question: has there ever been a classic postseason game where the Cubs ended up winning? Like, ever?

And as a follow-up, why do I like baseball again?

This was an exhausting, infuriating, exhilarating, and ultimately incredibly disappointing night. To illustrate how bizarre it was, of every pitcher the Cubs trotted out of the bullpen, Mike Montgomery was clearly the most valuable, eating four innings before a stagehand draped a cape over his left arm as it cried out “I just can’t do no more!”

And he ended up taking the loss after giving up back to back doubles to Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik in the bottom of the 13th. So if you turn on MLB Network in time to see someone’s head explode, that’s just Brian Kenny.

In retrospect, the second inning was a probably signal that this was going to be a truly strange night of baseball. The Cubs were already working Madison Bumgarner for some impressively long plate appearances when Addison Russell got hit on the forearm and Javy Baez followed with a line single that Conor Gillaspie couldn’t corral. These at bats were clearly taking something out of Bumgarner, as his audible grunts on every pitch made him sound like he was auditioning to be the syllable between “War” and “What is it good for?”

And then Jake Arrieta unloaded on a 1-2 fastball and launched a three run homer into the bleachers in left, sending the Cubs dugout into a gif of ecstasy that made Pharrell Williams look like Bon Iver. After watching that moment, my life’s goal is to one day be as happy about anything as Anthony Rizzo was about that home run.

Then came the agony of the middle innings. The Cubs repeatedly put runners on base but couldn’t cash them in. Good thing that has never backfired once in playoff history. Arrieta was pitching in a state of “good, not great” as his command came and went and the Giants scratched across single runs in the third and fifth. And each inning could have been even worse as Hunter Pence ended both with sharply hit drives to deep right field.

It became a bullpen game by the time the eighth inning rolled around with the heart of the Giants’ order due up. Joe Maddon chose to start the inning with Travis Wood facing Brandon Belt, who promptly went the other way on a slider and singled. Maddon then went to Hector Rondon who couldn’t get Buster Posey to chase on a 3-2 slider. So then the Cubs then decided to go all in and bring on Aroldis Chapman for a six out save.

He got one.

Which is less than six.

Analysis: That’s bad.

After blowing away Pence, Chapman was somehow victimized by Gillaspie, who turned around a 102 MPH high fastball and sent it all the way to the 421 foot sign in right field for a go ahead two-run triple. It’s now 2:27 AM and I’m bitter so I’d like to say something bad about Conor Gillaspie. But I just looked up his career numbers and it turns out they already did it for me.

What ended up being worse, though, was that after this crushing hit, Chapman still couldn’t miss bats and gave up an insurance run when Crawford hit a single through the drawn-in infield. This would unfortunately come in handy shortly.

So after what can only be described as an “Ivan Drago punch to the groin,” the Cubs headed to the ninth to face Sergio Romo. One thing we know about this team at this point is that they rarely die easily. And Dexter Fowler stepped up right away, working Romo for a well-earned lead-off walk on a 3-2 count. Which brought up Kris Bryant…

Hey, remember when Tony Massarotti asked “Can we pump the brakes on Kris Bryant?” Clearly someone in San Francisco thought to do that because Bryant hit one off the roof of a car. Specifically: the car on a billboard in left field. The ball bounced off the billboard into the bleachers for an unfathomable game-tying home run.

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: the most beautiful sight in AT&T Park is a Chevron ad.

This took the game deep into extra innings. And that was only because the Cubs had room for one more epic moment when Albert Almora absolutely laid out on a potential game winning Buster Posey line drive in the ninth inning and doubled Brandon Belt off first. At which point you could tell someone on Twitter was watching this Cubs game based solely on whether or not they just typed a certain three word phrase vulgar blasphemy.

Despite all of this, the Cubs couldn’t complete the storybook ending before the Giants outlasted them. It was a great night of baseball but ultimately for naught. So now the Cubs are facing their first bit of adversity in these playoffs. All season long, they’ve fought all of the tired narratives of gloom and doom and won every time. Now they have to do it one more time with two games left in a short series.

John Lackey goes later today. He didn’t come here for a haircut. Hopefully he’s better at using that phrase to motivate himself than I am in figuring out what it means.

Lead photo courtesy John Hefti—USA Today Sports.