Heyward, Lackey return Monday to St. Louis - as Cubs
The Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals rivalry is back on.
Actually, it's never "off," but these two ancient baseball rivals are set to square off again, beginning Monday night with the opener of a three-game series at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
And there are no shortage of storylines.
To begin, this is the first meeting between the teams since the Cubs beat the Cardinals 3 games to 1 in last October's National League division series. That series was the first postseason meeting between the clubs.
This week also marks the return to St. Louis for Cubs right fielder Jason Heyward and pitcher John Lackey, who just happens to start the series opener.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon got his first taste of Cubs-Cardinals last year, and he added a dash of cayenne pepper to the stew in September, when he stood up to the Cardinals and verbally tore up the "book" they allegedly wrote on playing the game properly.
"I'm definitely aware, and I really enjoy it," Maddon said of the rivalry. "I enjoyed it last year, too. I was just getting maybe a taste, a feel, for the passion of both sides, not having been in the National League, not having been part of that. I was more into the Yankees-Red Sox thing. I went through the whole American League vibe.
"Beyond that, the thing I really appreciate is the division: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and the traditional component of that division. It's really pretty spectacular."
As for last September's contretemps, Maddon called out the Cardinals for what he believed was them hitting the Cubs' Anthony Rizzo intentionally after then-Cubs pitcher Dan Haren had hit Matt Holliday.
"So to become this vigilante group that all of a sudden wants to get their own pound of flesh, that's absolutely insane, ridiculous and wrong," Maddon said at the time.
He added that the Cubs "don't start stuff, but we will end stuff."
On Sunday, Maddon said he was talking as much about his own team as he was the Cardinals.
"Nobody's going to give you anything, man, and I don't expect anything to be given," he said. "If you want to ascend, you got to take that. It's not going to be given to you. What I thought last year was that we didn't necessarily understand that. So I wanted our guys to understand that.
"You all know I grew up a Cardinal fan, and I know the Cardinal history probably as good as anybody, but I'm a Cub. You get to that point. They're good, and they've been for a long time. They're not going to relinquish anything easily. That was my point. It was not to denigrate anybody or say anything badly about anybody. It was about us."
The crowd reactions for both Heyward and Lackey at Busch Stadium should be interesting. Lackey pitched for the Cardinals for part of 2014 and last year. Heyward was traded from the Braves to the Cardinals after the 2014 season. Even though Heyward had no choice in playing for the Cardinals and was in St. Louis only one year, some Cardinals fans reacted angrily to his signing with the Cubs as a free agent last winter.
Some fans burned Heyward jerseys. However, Heyward said Sunday he also heard good things from Cardinals fans.
"The St. Louis fans I've seen in person have gone out of their way to be nice and say, 'Congratulations, thank you for last year, 2015, and we wish you nothing but the best, not against us,' obviously," he said.
He added the atmospheres at Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium are similar.
"It's a baseball place, like Wrigley Field, it's a baseball place," Heyward said of Busch. "You go there, and you expect to have good baseball. It's a good atmosphere for fans to come watch a baseball game and a baseball game played the right way."