World Series: Return of the bad Cubs puts Indians on brink of championship
Kirk Wessler Peoria Journal Star
CHICAGO — And on the fifth day of the 2016 World Series, in the fourth game, the Cubs of your lifetime and your forefathers' and mothers' lifetimes, those schlubs of your worst nightmares, the ones you could always count on to leave you wondering why you put yourself through loving them with such intensity, the ones you finally had dared to believe were gone …
They showed up in Wrigley Field.
From this team that was so good and so resilient all season, from this team with the best defense in baseball and the best staff of starting pitchers in the National League, there were errors, a wild pitch, a hit batsman, balls thrown off the mark, players falling down. There were long home runs smashed by the Indians on a night when the wind howled into Wrigley off Lake Michigan, the same wind that smacked down Cubs' long shots with impunity and turned them into routine outs.
The cruel truth now, after this 7-2 Indians victory Saturday night, is that the Cubs are in deep trouble. They are down 3-1 in the Series, which could end Sunday with a World Series championship being won in Wrigley Field. Just not by the Cubs.
In order to turn this around and win the championship, the Cubs must win Game 5 here Sunday night. Then they must return to Cleveland and win Games 6 on Tuesday and 7 on Wednesday. That's it. They have left themselves no other way.
"We've done it before, so there's no doubt we can do it again," third baseman Kris Bryant said, also manning up after committing two errors in the second inning that yielded the Indians' go-ahead run.
Bryant meant winning three games in a row. In winning 103 games during the regular season, the Cubs did that plenty of times. Most recently, they won three in a row from the Dodgers to win the National League Championship Series after falling behind 2-1.
But the Cubs also are capable of getting beaten at home for a third night in a row. They did that this season, too, getting swept by the Cardinals at Wrigley in mid-June.
What happened Saturday night was an all-out mess. After taking a 1-0 lead against Indians ace Corey Kluber in the first inning, on a leadoff double by Dexter Fowler and an RBI single by Anthony Rizzo, the Cubs fell apart in every way imaginable. The Wrigley crowd, almost deafening in its pregame excitement and euphoric with the early offensive pounce, fell almost silent.
Attempts at recovery were weak at best, and you could feel a dark cloud of doom gathering overhead.
Oh, no! It's happening again!
Besides the sloppy play, there was insult to injury in the seventh inning, when Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis unloaded a three-run homer to put the game out of reach. The darn blast even came with a history footnote: The last player to hit a three-run homer against the Cubs in a World Series was Babe Ruth, in 1932. Later, in that same game, Ruth would come to bat, point to the bleachers and then homer there again, famously calling his own shot.
The rub with Kipnis is that he grew up in Chicagoland, starred at Glenbrook North High School, loved the Cubs as a kid. In his heart of hearts, he still loves them, as he acknowledged the day before the Series began.
But he plays for the Indians now, and he wants to win a championship more than he wants to see the Cubs win one.
Despite this looming doom, the reality is that the past has no bearing on the present. The Indians are beating the Cubs in every phase of the game, as they did to the Red Sox in their American League Division Series and to the Blue Jays in the AL Championship Series.
"They're taking really good at-bats," Cubs catcher David Ross said. "They're taking their walks. They run the bases well. They pass it on to the next guy, keep the line moving. They're doing all the things we did all year and are not doing now."
For the Cubs to win, they need to get back to doing what they do well. Their task, rallying from a 3-1 deficit to win it all, has been accomplished only six times and not at all since the Royals did it to the Cardinals in 1985.
But the thing about baseball is that anything can happen. There's still time to shake off history.
"As long as there's one out left, one pitch coming," shortstop Addison Russell said, "we still have a chance."
— Kirk Wessler is Journal Star sports editor. Contact him at kwessler@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @KirkWessler.