Something unexpected happened in Wrigley Field Sunday night. The Cubs — the real Cubs, the ones you watched or heard about all regular season long, the ones you remember from their pre-World Series postseason rounds — came to the ballpark.
They left their impressions of Cub calamities past somewhere. Who knows where? Who cares? The hosts who let the Indians make off with the valuables and leave them tied up in the closet didn't wait for the cops.
They unbound themselves and recovered a decent amount of the valuables to beat the Indians 3-2 in Game 5. And just in case the Indians got any ideas about doubling back to steal those back, a patrolman named Aroldis Chapman was ready, willing, and able enough to tell them not to even think about it for two and two thirds innings worth of a high speed chase.
It wasn't always pretty, especially not with Chapman's brain vapor in the eighth with one out, when he forgot to head for first at once while Rizzo was on the edge of the outfield grass to keep Rajai Davis's smash from going up the right field line.
But you don't have to be pretty to nail an eight-out save, even as elegantly murderous as Chapman so often looks at his normal place of business. On the other hand, Cub Country would be hard pressed to find anything prettier looking this postseason than the way Chapman ended the Indians' eighth, with Davis on third, dropped strike three in on the floor of the zone to a shocked Francisco Lindor.
Unless it was Chapman blowing Jose Ramirez — whose second-inning homer off Cubs starter Jon (Who's on First) Lester opened the scoring in the first place — clean away with a violently swinging strike three to send the Series back to Cleveland with the Cubs still alive and showing a pulse, if not necessarily breathing fully on their own just yet.
For only the second time in the Series the team that scored first didn't win. That was probably the least significant detail. Considering how far the Indians had the Cubs up against the wall, it was achievement enough that they even tied the game, never mind went past the Tribe and held on so tautly.
And maybe the only one inside Wrigley Field who wasn't shocked to see Chapman come in with an eight-out save assignment was Chapman himself, who tweeted a portion of "Go Cubs Go!" after he locked it down. No finer way to punctuate the last Series game of the year at the Friendly Confines could have been offered.
"[Manager Joe Maddon] asked if I could be ready possibly to come into the seventh inning, and obviously I told him, 'I'm ready. I'm ready to go'," Chapman said through a translator after the game. "And whatever he needs me to do or how long he needs me to pitch for, I'm ready for it."
"This team is a special one," said third baseman Kris Bryant, who shook off a Game Four in which he played his position like a 1962 Met to have a Game Five in which he played more like a Brooks Robinson accompanied by a few 1969 Mets.
"And we look at so many times throughout the year where we haven't been playing good, but I feel like we turn that around. Someone told me today that seventeen times this year, we lost a game and went on to win three in a row. So why can't we do that now?"
The cynic and the Indian fan would remind him that, for one thing, they didn't have to deal with the like of that near-impregnable Indians bullpen those other 17 times; and, for another thing, winning two on the road in a World Series isn't exactly land mine free. Especially with Corey Kluber looming if the Cubs really do push the Series to the maximum limit.
But let's not spoil their fun just yet. Let the Cubs and their faithful bask in what they did Sunday night. They were at the edge of oblivion, with Bryant's Cleveland counterpart Jose Ramirez shoving them a little further over it in the top of the second with a 2-out home run into the basket a front the left field bleachers.
They still had the favorable pitching matchup in Lester against Trevor Bauer, and Lester's got the postseason experience enough not to let one early bomb explode his equilibrium. They made the Indians bullpen shake without stirring Andrew Miller even once. If you think that doesn't count for a lot, even as they got a hit and three walks out of Mike Clevenger, Bryan Shaw, and usual Indians closer Cody Allen, you must have slept through about half the Series.
Lester atoned for his Game One sputtering with a sharp six innings' work in which Ramirez's jack and Francisco Lindor's nasty 2-out RBI line single in the sixth — made possible in large part by Indians left fielder Rajai Davis making a track meet out of his 1-out single — seemed almost like excuse-us runs.
They figured Bauer striking out five in his first three innings was just a little out of character for the Indians right-hander and pounced in the bottom of the fourth, when Bryant parked a 1-1 pitch into the left center field bleachers. For the first time in most of the Wrigley Field leg of the Series the Friendly Confines went full-on nuclear.
Anthony Rizzo followed up promptly with a double off the right center field ivy, though he dodged a big bullet getting there. His slow start out of the box might have gotten him thrown out at second if Lonnie Chisenhall instead of Brandon Guyer were playing right field. But he survived to be singled to third by Ben Zobrist and sent home when Addison Russell's soft grounder reached a no man's land on the third base side of the infield.
One out later Javier Baez — whose free swinging at pitches not within three city blocks of his bat probably has the Cubs thinking about putting him on a swing limit, if not a leash at the plate — pushed maybe the single most perfect bunt in Cub history up the third base line, beating it out to set up ducks on the pond for David Ross. And Ross lifted a long fly to left enabling Zobrist to become the third Cub run.
Suddenly, Wrigley Field became Chicago's largest outdoor insane asylum.
Grandpa Rossy was a player in one of the several Cub fielding moments in which they looked more like acrobats than like Mack Sennett players. Converging with Rizzo on Santana's second-inning pop to the right of the plate, Ross had it. And lost it. And Rizzo fond it before it hit the ground. It was a near-carbon copy of Pete Rose grabbing what Bob Boone couldn't hold onto in the 1980 World Series.
Earlier in the same inning, Bryant channeled his inner Brooks Robinson when he dove for Guyer's smash up the line and stopped it. Then his throw to first forced Rizzo to channel his inner Keith Hernandez, stretching to his own breaking point and somehow keeping his cleat on the edge of the pad to finish the out.
An inning later, Jason Heyward ran across the right field line chasing Bauer's high foul pop, then hoisted himself on the top of the sidewall with one hand while reaching back to get Bauer's pop. Even Bauer appreciated the play, clapping onto his bat with a big grin before returning to the dugout.
Those will be charming sidebars to the real Sunday stories. Bryant being Bryant at long last, when the Cubs needed it the absolute most, and Chapman — who normally had trouble coming in with men on base before Sunday night — putting on a show six parts precision assassination and half a dozen parts trapeze act without a net.
"That," said Indians manager Terry Francona, "was a big ask. And he answered it. That was impressive. It's kind of like what Andrew's done for us."
Maybe the Cleveland leg of the Series will give us Chapman vs. Miller directly. It'd be the biggest show on earth since Ed Sullivan rolled out the Beatles and America, including her criminals, took the hour off to watch. Except that the Beatles didn't have to face bat-breaking sliders or fastballs that can out-race bullet trains with a World Series drought on the line.
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