This year’s Cubs are a breed apart. They’re different from the Cubs of the past–even the relatively successful Cubs of 1984, ’89, and ’98–in that they’re less lovable but more steely and determined. That attitude is epitomized by Mark Prior, who established himself as the team’s ace in the second half of the season by going 10-1 with a 1.52 earned run average. That was after spending three weeks on the disabled list because of a July collision with Atlanta Braves second baseman Marcus Giles in a baserunning gaffe at Wrigley Field.
Dark-bottomed clouds like those at the start of The Simpsons rolled slowly across the sky, and the bleachers filled quickly while the grandstand gradually packed. The fall afternoon was placid only on the surface. Every fan watched the hand-operated scoreboard for signs of life behind the shuttered slots, and when the Astros scored in the bottom of the first there was a sense that, well, that was expected. But when the Brewers put two on the board in the third, there was a sudden rise of energy in the crowd; people could almost smell it, the potential for something grand and historic to happen.
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In the fourth, Prior left a high fastball out over the plate, and Craig Wilson pounded it into the left-field bleachers. Prior didn’t look sharp. He was making a lot of pitches and seemed to be overthrowing. Usually his motion is so compact and efficient that the ball flies out of his hand like a fighter jet catapulted off the deck of a carrier, but he seemed to have to work to throw it hard on this day–a bad sign and perhaps a dangerous one, as he’d been averaging 130 pitches a start in September, heavy use for someone just turning 23 and finishing his first full season in the majors. Still, he always made the pitch he needed to get himself out of the moderate trouble he’d gotten himself into, and the Cubs came to his rescue in the fourth and fifth.
Sosa started things off–as he so often did this season–with a gargantuan homer in the first. He crushed a low pitch from fireballer Ryan Vogelsong and, hopping almost out of his shoes, sent it up, up, and away, over the shrubbery of the hitting background and into the refreshment stand at the base of the deep-center-field bleachers. The fans roared; they could feel it. When the Cubs opened the second with four straight hits–Ramon Martinez’s scooted under the glove of the second baseman like a mouse under a kitchen counter to score Ramirez–the call went forth across the north side. The Cubs scored five that inning to open a 6-0 lead, and it was just a matter of time.
“Feel free to believe in us,” Remlinger added. “Don’t worry about getting hurt.”
Clement couldn’t finish the job the way he had against the Pirates. Starting the fourth game at Wrigley last Saturday–as men, women, and children wore muffs on their chins in a show of support–he struggled. Handed a 1-0 lead, he gave up a run in the third and three in the fourth as Chipper Jones hit a two-run homer. Jones added another two-run shot off Mark Guthrie in the eighth, negating two solo homers by Karros. The final was 6-4, with Sosa hopping as his long fly off John Smoltz died on the warning track for the final out.
