When I climbed the steps into the grandstand before the first game of the National League Championship Series, Wrigley Field appeared more beautiful than I had ever seen it. After a full day of Indian-summer sun the park was warm and welcoming–even if Sammy Sosa, taking batting practice, had already settled into fall fashion and sported a blue watch cap. The wind wafted out to straightaway center, and the ball carried well, each crack of the bat echoing off the grandstand with a little extra crispness in the thin autumn air. The setting sun, low on the horizon, gave everything a rosy glow, and the ivy on the outfield walls was just beginning to hint at another color. Indeed, reserve catcher Josh Paul would soon take to calling this team “the red-ivy Cubs,” for how late they played into the season. So, before we advance to the inevitable realization that red ivy is also dying ivy, before we grant that the Cubs’ demise on October 15 came too soon even if it was the latest game ever played at Wrigley, let’s preserve that image of the Friendly Confines as if under a massive glass dome. In great beauty lay the seeds of great tragedy.
The first game might have warned everyone what was to come, because in many ways it was the series in miniature. The Cubs pounded across four runs in the first inning when Beckett inexplicably left his curveball in the bullpen. Kenny Lofton walked. Mark Grudzielanek showed bunt, then hammered the ball over Pierre’s head for a triple, and Moises Alou hit a towering shot just inside the left-field foul pole that set off the first of several melees involving fans chasing balls on Waveland Avenue. Aramis Ramirez tripled on another Beckett fastball and scored on a double by Alex Gonzalez.
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“I was there,” I said. “I saw Dusty. He said we have our two horses going the next two games. They’ll go in games six and seven.”
Chicagoans took to the city’s bars en masse for the third game. My little group couldn’t find seats in one Ashland Avenue tavern, so we went up the street to a restaurant and watched on the bar TV there, dining all the while with a small but devoted group of fellow fans. It was another tense 11-inning affair that was won by the Cubs this time, an outcome that distracted from what could later be recognized as the first cracks in the team’s facade. Lofton led off the game with a single off the soft-tossing lefty Mark Redman, went to second on a Grudzie bunt, and scored on a Sosa single to give the Cubs the lead. Wood himself padded it with a sacrifice fly in the second that scored Eric Karros, but gave back a run in the bottom half and after that struggled to maintain the 2-1 lead. He totally lost his rhythm in the fifth with two out, walking the pitcher, giving up a hit to Pierre, and walking Castillo to load the bases, but pulled himself together to fan Rodriguez on three straight breaking pitches. He wasn’t so lucky in the seventh, getting himself in a jam and then giving up run-scoring singles to Castillo and Rodriguez on low, straight fastballs. Baker worked a bit of magic in the eighth, calling on Tom Goodwin and Simon to pinch-hit back-to-back at the bottom of the order. Goodwin tripled, and Simon followed by lashing a first-pitch fastball off Chad Fox into the right-field seats. Yet Borowski couldn’t nail down the save, and the game went into extra innings tied at four. There it stood until the 11th, when Lofton singled with one out, and Baker worked what would turn out to be his last trick of the year. He sent Doug Glanville up to pinch-hit and called a hit-and-run. Glanville slapped the ball directly through the spot in the infield vacated by the shortstop covering second, and the ball scooted past left fielder Jeff Conine all the way to the wall for a run-scoring triple. In a last bit of good fortune, Ramirez booted a game-ending grounder to third in the bottom half, only to find Castillo running from second straight toward him. Ramirez tagged him for the final out. The Cubs had won, 5-4, and led the series 2-1. Their horses had held on, if not entirely by themselves.
“Let’s go Prior!” the fans chanted to start the eighth, and Mike Mordecai popped up to become the eighth straight hitter he’d retired.
Alou was irate, and a noticeably miffed Prior argued fan interference–to no avail. The chant of “Ass-hole! Ass-hole!” began in the right-field bleachers and soon circled the stadium, and by that time Bartman was shriveling in his seat as the realization no doubt came to him that his life would never be the same. It would never be the same because Prior threw a wild pitch with his next delivery, walking Castillo and sending Pierre to third. He got two strikes on Rodriguez but then left an 0-2 curve out over the plate, and Rodriguez lined it into left to score Pierre. Then, in the most critical play of the game, Cabrera grounded a first-pitch curve to short, where Gonzalez had made a mere ten errors all season. Yet he booted the ball trying to backhand it, and everyone was safe. Derrek Lee, hog-tied by Chicago pitching all series and 0-3 on the night, hit a first-pitch fastball into the left-field gap for a double, tying the game and chasing Prior. After he left the game, 39,577 fans went utterly silent as the Marlins pushed five more runs across the plate against Farnsworth and Remlinger. The Cubs went meekly in the last two innings, with Urbina not even breaking a sweat, leaving him ready to go again in game seven, when Beckett would be available out of the pen.
