WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW In another wild game, with seven home runs between the two teams, it was the Reds’ turn to blow a huge lead—9-0 in the second, tied in the fifth—but still win. Worse for the Cubs, Lester took himself out of the game in the second and is being evaluated for left lat […]
Author: Tom Hitchner
Spahn and Sain: Cubs Rained Out in Colorado
The Cubs played 18 innings of baseball yesterday, and they’re playing zero tonight. Tomorrow they’ll play (at least) 18 innings again. This schedule is a bold new direction for baseball—one that really gives those pace of play arguments more weight. Obviously, this is a seriously well-timed rainout, of the kind that fans of Spahn and […]
Game 5 Recap: Cubs 11, Brewers 6
What you need to know: A blah start from Kyle Hendricks is made irrelevant by an explosive Cubs offensive performance. Kris Bryant leads the way, going 3-for-5 with two doubles. Next level: The Cubs’ homer drought continues—coming into the game they’d hit two home runs on the year, and that…is…still true. You can’t blame the […]
Second City November: Bombs Away and a Forced Game Seven
Let’s hear it for the blowout Game Six. We’re all familiar with the tight Game Six that sends the series to an extra game: the Cardinals breaking the Rangers’ hearts in 2011, the Bloody Sock Game in the 2004 ALCS, the Angels’ comeback in 2002. Historic games all, swinging the momentum of a series dramatically. Undoubtedly worth […]
Second City October: A Decision in the Seventh Inning
I know that in the middle of the World Series no one cares about the argument over the DH…and yet, on another level, it’s during the World Series that that argument is most prominent, because the entire baseball world becomes centered around a faceoff between the two philosophies. That’s an opportunity we who are interested […]
Second City October: What I Am, You Will Be—The Giants Meet the Cubs
Is 2016 richer in intriguing potential playoff series than previous years have been? It certainly seems like it, even without intriguing, now-impossible series like Nationals-Orioles or Cubs-Mets (the 1969 pennant race redux). Already, with Rangers-Blue Jays, we have a rematch of a highly charged playoff from last year, with bad blood spilling into the current season. […]
Why Do We Care About Bandwagon Fans?
By clinching their postseason spot before any other team, the Cubs earned a special privilege: first crack at The Bandwagon Conversation. Even as people were gathering in celebration around a vacant Wrigley Field, others were noting archly that many of them were Johnnies-come-lately who only started following the team when it was clear this year’s […]
Game 145 Recap: Cubs 7 Cardinals 0
The Cubs reduced their magic number to one in ruthlessly efficient fashion, cruising blithely through St. Louis as if the Cardinals were a light spring rain. It was a game that took just over two and a half hours and yet still managed to be relaxing, even pleasantly boring. Finding myself in Vegas, I put […]
“Sugar,” Tommy La Stella, and Anticlimax
People are feeling all kinds of things about Tommy La Stella—anger, contempt, sympathy—but the writers so far who have best approximated my own feelings are the ones who get at how murky and elusive the story is. Here at Wrigleyville, Ken Schultz rejected the simple narrative—spoiled young player needs to toughen up and do what he’s told—and […]
The Cubs’ Curse in the Age of the Auteur GM
Hello, BP Wrigleyville! I’m Tom Hitchner, and I’ve been blogging about various sports matters at my site The Spiel for the last year. I’m very flattered that Rian has asked me to write the occasional piece here, especially because I’m missing a key qualification: I’m not a Cubs fan. I’m a Giants fan. I wasn’t paying enough […]