WS Game 2: Enter the Schwarbinator

This is what we knew about Kyle Schwarber before this World Series: He made a splash — no, a tidal wave — in last year's postseason. Including his parking of a meatball from St. Louis's Kevin Siegrist atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard in the seventh inning of the division series clincher.

Before he had a chance to calibrate his bat this season, Schwarber was 0-for-4 when a horrible outfield collision destroyed his knee and took him out for the year. His Cubs, who were only this year's World Series favorites coming off last year's winter meetings (that's a joke, folks, kind of), lived up to their lofty expectations for once. And maybe for all time.

Schwarber spent the season on the trainer's table, in the infirmary, a big, bopping kid who looks like a wrestler and wasn't expected to be seen in a Cub uniform until spring training 2017 no matter what the Cubs ended up doing before then.

Then he became a whisper up from the Arizona Fall League, after his doctors cleared him to at least think about hitting again. He swung at a few thousand pitches from assorted pitching machines and coaches. He played two games for the Mesa Solar Sox. And suddenly the whisper included that he'd be activated for the World Series.

Remembering Schwarber's tape measure thumping last fall, Cub Country went ecstatic. The rest of the world, including the Indians, probably, went, Are you nuts?!?

The Cubs were so nuts they slotted Schwarber into the DH hole for Games 1 and 2 in Progressive Field. Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller and company may have pinned the Cubs' ears back in Game One, but Schwarber gave them and the audience a jolt when he jerked one off Kluber that hit the right field fence on the fly and missed being a bomb by about a foot.

Schwarber didn't launch any ICBMs in Game Two Wednesday night. He didn't have to. Two hard-shot RBI singles up the same pipe in the third and the fifth, not to mention moseying on home with the fifth Cubs run on a ducks-on-the-pond walk to Addison Russell in that very fifth, were more than enough.

Manager Joe Maddon and the entire Cub administration risked looking like the fools of the month, if not the century, by activating Schwarber. He's only spent the first two games making them look like geniuses. If only that could turn him overnight into at least a competent defender — he's known to play the outfield like a dump truck with two flat tires — with the World Series shifting to Wrigley Field Friday night.

Even off the bench Schwarber must already have the Indians thinking, when they're not praying. He made things look too easy for a guy who hadn't seen live major league pitching since early April. Just don't tell him that. "No, it's not that easy, first off," the Schwarbinator said after the 5-1 win. "Baseball's a crazy game."

Game 2 Exhibit A: What the Indians did to the Cubs in Game 1 — out-pitch and out-hit them while wreaking havoc courtesy of a few Cub mistakes — the Cubs did to the Indians in Game 2, and with an almost identical win result.

Exhibit B: Jake Arrieta, perhaps addled early by the chill and his not having pitched in a little over a week, trying to find the handle on his repertoire yet surviving a testy Indians first, then flirting with a no-hitter while retiring fifteen out of the next sixteen batters he faced.

"I kind of had my foot on the gas a little too much at the start, trying to do more than I needed to," Arrieta told reporters after the 5-1 win was banked. "Then I really got back to just executing good pitches towards the bottom of the strike zone."

Jason Kipnis shot a one-out hit through the second base side in the bottom of the sixth that traveled deep enough in right center to afford him a double. "I knew I hadn't given up a hit all the way to the sixth," Arrieta said. "That's really not the focus in a game like this. Whether they get a hit or not really doesn't affect the way you continue to approach that lineup, especially with a five-run lead."

For Kipnis, it was a huge relief. He'd gone 4-for-11 in the Indians' division series against the Red Sox, but 2-for-28 until he punctured Arrieta. "I hadn't seen first base in a while," he cracked after the game. "I forgot where it was. I was confused where to go after that."

Exhibit C: The Cubs manhandling six Indians pitchers including starter Trevor (Dem Drones) Bauer. They jumped Bauer in the first with Kris Bryant's one-out rip of a line single to right and Anthony Rizzo's followup ripper down the right field line, bounding off the wall to turn into an RBI triple and an immediate 1-0 Cubs lead.

Schwarber then ripped an 0-2 service down the third base line and missed an RBI by inches as the ball landed just outside the third base line, before his big swinging strikeout ended the inning at 1-0, Cubs. Not that Bauer was in for a simple evening from there.

He shook off a leadoff infield hit by Javier Baez in the second, a high chopper third baseman Jose Ramirez couldn't barehand as he hustled down from third, with a pair of fly outs and a sharp line out to right. He had two outs in the third when he walked Rizzo, surrendered a cue shot single to Ben Zobrist, and Schwarber's RBI single on 3-0 before nailing Baez swinging on a low slider, maybe his best pitch of the night.

As Arrieta slowly but surely found and secured the handle on his pitches, the Cubs continued pecking at Bauer and the Tribe. A fourth-inning leadoff walk to Willson Contreras led to a swift double play, but Russell lined Bauer's first pitch up the pipe for a single and the end of his night. Zach McAllister relieved to strike out Dexter Fowler for the side. That'd teach him.

The Cubs added him to their victim list in the fifth. A one-out walk to Rizzo preceded Ben Zobrist lining one to the right field corner. This time, Indians right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall fell into a slide trying to stop the ball on the ricochet, and Rizzo hustled home with the third Cub run while Zobrist took possession of third base. Then in came Shaw, and up came Schwarber to swat his second RBI single of the night.

After the Schwarbinator took second on a wild pitch, Contreras grounded one to the right side, where Kipnis, the Indians second baseman who's playing through what's left of an ankle sprain incurred in the Indians' pennant celebration, juggled, juggled, and finally threw a hair too late to beat Contreras to the pad. Another unintentional walk, to Jorge Soler after opening with strike one, set up ducks on the pond for Russell and his RBI stroll.

Kipnis's breakup of Arrieta's no-hit bid led to the only Indians run of the night, when he took third on Lindor's chopper to second and came home on a wild pitch. Arrieta had been a little wild all night but they called it effective wild, since the Indians mostly had no clue what to do with him after the first and his defenders did a little more of their usual.

After Indians first baseman Mike Napoli delivered his first Series hit, a clean single, Mike Montgomery took over for the Cubs. He let the Indians tease him but nothing more, particularly when he struck out Carlos Santana on a wind-whipping swing with two on and two out in the seventh.

Napoli's two-out single in the eighth prompted Maddon to go to Aroldis Chapman, who promptly blew Ramirez away on strikes for the side, then finished tidily enough around a two-out walk in the ninth.

"We had a big win and no one got too high in here," Napoli said after the game. "No one thought we'd won the World Series. We have to bounce back like we did Tuesday. It's a best of seven series. You've got to win four games before they do."

"We gave up nine hits, eight walks and two errors, and we only gave up five runs," said Indians manager Terry Francona, after his first World Series loss as a manager, almost a decade after the second of his two Series sweeps managing the Red Sox. "We're probably pretty fortunate because there was a lot of traffic."

That's nothing compared to the expected traffic jams getting to Wrigley Field Friday night. World Series baseball hasn't been played there since the '45 Series. And a lot of those people will want to get a piece of the Schwarbinator while they're at it.