Two games that sum up the 2016 Chicago Cubs
The two games had little in common, except for how the Chicago Cubs approached them and how they finished them.
One was the regular-season finale at Cincinnati. The Cubs didn't need to win the game, having clinched the National League Central more than two weeks previous. They trailed the Reds 4-2 heading into the eighth inning and 4-3 entering the ninth.
On the radio in Cincinnati, veteran Reds voice Marty Brennaman was busy saying goodbye for the season and thanking everybody from the team owner to the floor sweeper at the Great American Ball Park.
All the while, the Cubs kept pinging away at the plate, scoring 4 runs and winning the game 7-4.
The other game had much more meaning.
Tuesday night at AT&T Park, the Cubs trailed the San Francisco Giants 5-2 entering the ninth, and they were on the brink of frittering away a two-games-to-none lead in the National League division series and coming home to face the Giants' Johnny Cueto in a decisive Game 5.
But as they did in Cincinnati, the Cubs didn't quit. A porous Giants bullpen gave them an opening, and they took it, scoring 4 runs to rally for a stunning 6-5 victory and a happy trip home to get ready for the National League championship series.
In one of the media sessions during the NLDS, right fielder Jason Heyward cited the game in Cincinnati as a measure of what the Cubs are made. In the champagne-soaked clubhouse late Tuesday night, Cubs from one end of the room to the other voiced what's become a team mantra.
“We never quit,” said bench coach Dave Martinez, the right-hand man of manager Joe Maddon, who had just got done saying the same thing.
Turns out, this approach is something that took life last season, when a then-surprising Cubs team won the wild-card and the NLDS before getting swept out of the NLCS by the New York Mets.
“Here we are,” said third baseman Kris Bryant, a leading MVP candidate. “Last year we kind of adopted the saying, 'Never give up.' We'd say it after every big win. Today was no different.”
That spirit was evident in Tuesday night's ninth inning, when Bryant led off with a single against Giants reliever Derek Law. Anthony Rizzo followed with a walk against Javier Lopez. Giants manager Bruce Bochy brought in Sergio Romo to face Ben Zobrist, who doubled home Bryant and sent Rizzo to third base.
Chris Coghlan came up to pinch hit, and Bochy countered with Will Smith. Seeing that, Maddon had rookie Willson Contreras bat for Coghlan, and Contreras singled up the middle to score Rizzo and Zobrist with the tying runs.
After Heyward bunted into a forceout — accompanied by a throwing error — Bochy made another move, making the bullpen call for Hunter Strickland. Javier Baez greeted Strickland with a single up the middle to score Heyward with the eventual winning run.
The outburst arrived in breathtaking contrast to how the Cubs hit — or did not hit — earlier in the game.
Until the ninth, they had just 2 hits, a home run by David Ross in the third inning and a single by Rizzo in the fourth. Both came against Giants starter Matt Moore, who gave Cubs little else.
“We needed to string a couple good at-bats together,” said team president Theo Epstein from the middle of the postgame celebration. “It was starting to come (Monday) night. We hit a few balls hard right at guys. We weren't able to come all the way back.
“Finally, after all that frustration, it was released cathartically in the ninth inning. We just exploded in the ninth. It finally came to the fore for us.”
Closer Aroldis Chapman came in and struck out all three Giants he faced in the bottom of the ninth, and before you knew it, the public-address announcer was telling fans the Giants would see them next April.
This is a Giants franchise that won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014. This year's bunch wasn't going down without a fight.
“To do it in the postseason, on the road and against a team that's won 10 straight elimination games, is an incredible accomplishment,” Epstein said. “It's hard to finish any team in a postseason series, let alone one that has their kind of pedigree and character.
“That says a lot, for not being ourselves for eight innings, to come alive like that. That says a lot about who we are.”
In the middle of the clubhouse, pitcher Jon Lester, who has firmly established himself as a team leader, weighed in on the Cubs' wherewithal to win games like this.
“I think it's just our personality, it's our group,” Lester said. “Yeah, you look at our lineups and you look at our staff and everything. We have a lot of talent, but we have a lot of grinders. And I think that starts top to bottom.
“We grind. Yeah, we have some flashy guys. We guys who are MVPs and Cy Youngs and stuff like that, but when it comes down to it, we're kind of like the 9-to-5 Chicago person who goes to work every day and grinds it out. That's what we do.
“That showed tonight, just with our at-bats and the way we went about our pitching and catching. You look at Rossy flying all over the place behind the plate, blocking balls and acting like he's 25. It's awesome to see. It's just the personality of our team.”