Apparently, God has a sense of humor, after all. Fathers have been known to use wit to discipline their children, you know. And the Father of fathers sure picked a beauty to teach us a lesson after His foolish American children picked Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton for the White House.
The Chicago Cubs are going to the World Series for the first time since just after World War II. To play the Cleveland Indians, who haven't won the World Series since just before the Berlin Airlift.
The presence of the Indians awaiting the National League Championship Series winner proved anything but a transcendental block to the Cubs, who picked up after three NLCS games in which their bats seemed to sleep to three more in which their bats turned into bludgeons.
There will now be a slight pause while you all say, "In the name of God, what have we done to deserve this?"
How long before it really hits Chicago? Based on readings of the Cleveland-area press, it hasn't yet struck anyone there that the Indians are about to be players in a divine comedy that Dante couldn't have imagined if he'd been fed copious amounts of distilled spirits. Yet.
It was as ESPN's Jayson Stark described as 9:45 PM Wrigley Daylight Time, Saturday night, when Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo snapped his mitt around NLCS co-MVP (with Jon Lester) Javier Baez's relay throw from second base, completing the Game 6-ending double play into which Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, a pinch hitter, hit off Aroldis Chapman.
And, when Cub Country and the world realised they weren't seeing things, after all.
"I'm sleeping with this thing tonight," crowed Rizzo in a postgame interview, pulling the double play ball he caught to start the postgame parties out of his pocket. "Are you kidding me?"
The Cubs — the Cubs! — really did puncture Clayton Kershaw for a 5-0 lead that held up behind Kyle Hendricks's virtuoso starting performance and Chapman's almost too perfect relief. (How does a mere four Dodger baserunners, three eliminated on double plays and one on a pickoff, strike you?) Wrigley Field's game-long impression of a California earthquake, minus the collapse of the ballpark and every building surrounding it, obliterated the Richter scale.
"This," said Hendricks, the National League's ERA leader on the regular season, "might have been the best game I pitched all year." He wasn't just talking about his own performance, either, we think.
I thought it was surreal enough that I had seen the Red Sox, for whom I'd rooted since the 1967 pennant race, get to the Promised Land three times in my lifetime, never mind that first, surreal, you-had-to-be-there lease won the hardest way in 2004. But I'd also come to develop an empathy for the Cubs and the Indians over the years.
Seeing them come to play each other in the World Series? The two most accursed of remaining franchises thought bedeviled by age-old curses or close enough to them as Series opponents?
"Making it to the World Series is no small feat, no matter how long you haven't been there. Give credit to the Cubs," a gracious if spent Kershaw said. They played well the whole series, started swinging the bats the last three games. They're just a better team."
The Cubs and the Red Sox dodged a howitzer shell in 2003, each getting to within five outs of reaching that year's World Series only to lose the chances in classic calamitous fashion. The 2004 Red Sox at least got to beat an ancient enemy in the Series. The Cubs and the Indians don't get that dispensation now.
Doesn't it just figure? Even if the Indians have at least played in four World Series since their last Series conquest while the Cubs haven't even seen themselves in one since just after World War II ended?
Sure, go ahead, Cubs. Deke us into thinking the worst when you get outscored 11-8 in the first three games, then go outscore the Dodgers 23-6 in the final three. If you can take it, we can.
Take a finally empty Kershaw apart, the first wrench being Dexter Fowler's leadoff whack of a high slider, in the bottom of the first, for a ground rule double down the right field line, before Kris Bryant lines an opposite-field single to right to send Fowler home.
Let Dodger left fielder Andrew Toles follow up with one of those errors that used to be the undoing of numerous Cubs teams past, taking his eyes off Rizzo's drive for a split second, enough to let the ball hit the heel of his glove and set up second and third for Ben Zobrist to loft a sacrifice fly for the second Cub run.
Sit back (if you dare) while Addison Russell, who'd pick Puig's grounder to start the game-ender, lines a 2-2 service on a bounce off the left field ivy, opening the bottom of the second with the Cubs' second consecutive leadoff double. Forgive Fowler for getting hung up and just plain hung trying to stretch it after he rips a bullet single through third base to send home Russell with a third unanswered Cub run.
Relax while the Cubs threaten (a one-out double by Rizzo) but don't score in the bottom of the third, because one inning later Willson Contreras — whose 7-for-17 performance in the NLCS entering Game 6 just about begged publicly for more playing time — sends the second pitch of the inning, a dead slider, into the left field bleachers. Making the Cubs the first ever to have three different catchers hit home runs in the same postseason.
While you're at it, accept a momentary groan upon reminders that the Cubs prior to Game 6 were 1-4 in previous postseason Games 6, including their only previous NLCS Game 6 in 2003. The one that turned a 3-0 Cub lead with five outs to go before reaching the World Series into a double-play grounder bounding off a shortstop's chest and an eight-run Marlins inning before a Game 7 wipeout.
That was then. This was now the bottom of the fifth. Give Kershaw a break when he nails Fowler looking at maybe the best pitch the Dodger left-hander threw all night, a back door slider with burglar's tools aboard. Because one fly out later, Rizzo sends a 1-1 service into the right field bleachers.
Watch Hendricks play the Dodgers like B.B. King played the blues, the right bent note here, the right sharply piercing note there, up and down the scale in measured but magnificent form.
Relax when Dodger manager Dave Roberts decides Kershaw's been abused long enough, on a night his curve ball resigned its commission and he had nothing but disobedient fastballs and slides the Cubs could sit on with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres in hand.
So he reaches for closer Kenley Jansen, in the desperate hope that his men can do something, anything with Hendricks or anyone else the Cubs send out? Jansen pitches masterfully enough in what proves a losing cause while Cubs manager Joe Maddon decides Josh Reddick's one-out single in the top of the eighth means Hendricks gave everything he had and then some.
Maddon hands off to Chapman, who's struggled with inherited runners earlier this postseason, but who takes only four pitches to lure pinch hitter Howie Kendrick into dialing Area Code 5-6-3 for the side, then shakes off a one out walk to get Puig, batting for Jansen, to dial Area Code 6-4-3 for the pennant.
That one-out walk, by Carlos Ruiz pinch hitting for Chase Utley, was interrupted by a high fly foul down the left field line and practically into the region where sat, in Game 6 2003 ... no, we're not going to dredge that up again. Even if David Ross didn't seem to mind talking about it.
"Somebody said that in the dugout," Grandpa Rossy said after the game. "And I just said, 'Who cares, you know?' We've got one out and the guy on the mound throws 100. I like our chances.' So when he said, 'Ooh, that was right where [Steve] Bartman was,' I just went, 'Perfect. It went all the way in the stands. Foul ball. So now we can win'."
Now you get the Indians in the World Series. Maybe America deserves this kind of cardiac compromise for picking Trump vs. Clinton. (That was a long, bellowing HELLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPP!!!! you heard through beyond the party noises.) But you Cubs, and you Indians while we're at it, teams whose uniform colors might inspire this to be called the Code Blue Series, sure don't.
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