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Imrem: Fowler sets tone for Cubs in first at-bat

No baseball game should be over after nine pitches.

But Game 2 of the NL Division Series between the Giants and Cubs was.

Essentially, anyway.

Maybe the entire best-of-five series is over, too.

Again, essentially.

This game was like “Born to Run” being over after “In the day we sweat it out on the …”

Dexter Fowler made those first nine pitches sing Saturday night and the Cubs proceeded to hum past the Giants 5-2.

The Cubs lead the series 2-0 as the teams move to San Francisco for Game 3 on Monday night.

Fowler just might end that game early as the Cubs leadoff man in the first inning.

It's what Fowler does and what he has done often for the Cubs this season and last: Establish the game's tempo with his first at-bat.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon wasn't kidding last year when he started telling Fowler, “You go, we go.”

In other words, how Fowler goes at the top of the batting order is how the rest of the Cubs lineup will go.

OK, so it's an exaggeration to say that Game 2 was over after nine pitches. One batter does not a victory make, right?

Still to come was Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks leaving early after being hit by a line drive; reliever Travis Wood hitting a home run; the Giants threatening but never, you know, really threatening.

Yet sometimes one batter and nine pitches can set the pace for the rest of the race.

On Sept. 1, Fowler fashioned a 13-pitch plate appearance that resulted in a walk from Jeff Samardzija.

The Giants' starting pitcher wound up throwing 47 pitches in that one inning and had to leave after the fourth.

On this night, those nine pitches to Fowler led to 20 in the inning, a Cubs run and a hint of what was to come.

“I thought we had him struck out,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of the fourth pitch.

No such luck for the Giants. Samardzija was never the same and he left after the Cubs scored three more runs in the second.

“I think it's fair to say that he was a little bit off tonight,” Bochy said.

By the time Samardzija departed, Springsteen would have gotten around to “ … streets of a runaway American dream.”

Fowler must drive opposing pitchers wacky as he drives their pitch count up.

He fouls off a strike, takes a ball, fouls off a couple more, on and on until the pitcher has no idea what to throw next.

The at-bat might result in a walk as on Sept. 1. Or Fowler might quit fooling around and rip a basehit somewhere.

This time it was the latter as Fowler doubled off the ivy in right-center field and scored on Ben Zobrist's two-out single.

Every time Fowler does something like that, it's easy to flash back to the day in spring training when the Cubs' future became as bright as the Arizona sun.

Fowler was leaving after one season. He was signing with the Orioles. The Cubs would have to adjust.

With you go-we go gone, Jason Heyward would have to move from his beloved right field to center. Maddon would have to find a new leadoff hitter.

Then like out of a puff of smoke in a magic trick, Fowler appeared in Cubs camp and seven months later Samardzija's first nine pitches spelled doom for him and gloom for the Giants.

Dexter Fowler went 0-3 the rest of the night but that first at-bat did enough damage.

Essentially, that is.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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