Say Something

Well, it happened.  In their 108^th year of trying, the Cubs finally won a World Series, beating the Indians 8-7 in 10 innings of game seven.  We all watched, and we all hoped for a different outcome.  I didn’t raise my daughter to jump on North Side bandwagons.

 

As a White Sox fan, I look for silver linings and may have found one in the person of Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon.  He pulled starter Kyle Hendricks in the fifth, with Hendricks in command of his pitches and ahead by four runs.  Maddon’s first choice out of the pen was Jon Lester, who proceeded to give up a two-run wild pitch.  Still, the Cubs were ahead 6-3 in the eighth when Maddon switched to Aroldis Chapman, pitching in his third straight game, and all for more than an inning.  Chapman yielded three two-out runs, one of them belonging to Lester.  That tied the score at six and invoked one of my baseball rules: any team that scores three or more runs to tie the score in the seventh inning or later but doesn’t take the lead in that inning is likely to lose.  And the Indians did.

 

They put another baserunner on in the eighth, and he had second base stolen, with the throw going into centerfield no less, but the batter was swing happy and chased a ball out of the zone for strike three.  After that, God signaled his displeasure with the city of Cleveland; it might have something to do with Chief Wahoo.  Anyway, the Indians went down in order in the ninth, and then it rained.

 

That mattered because the delay took Indians’ reliever Brian Shaw out of his rhythm.  The Cubs scored two in the tenth and held on as the Indians answered with but one.  There’s always next year.  At least Maddon will be back in the dugout.