There’s probably nothing much of any real value that can be added here to the Cubs’ recent exploits. The Cubs’ rise to first place has had to be experienced to be believed, and it seems almost everyone has followed the team in one way or another–if not by actually getting out to a game, then by watching the Cubs on television or, at very least, catching the highlights on the nightly news. And there have been plenty of people getting out to the games themselves. Approaching Wrigley Field Wednesday week was like walking into a grand, oversized bazaar. The sidewalks were crammed, both with fans going to the game and with people hawking T-shirts, hats, peanuts, and any number of other goods. The hottest items on the street were small brooms and brightly colored T-shirts that asked the question, ” What the hell’s an Expo?” Both were clear signs of pennant fever, for the Cubs and Montreal Expos were about to play the third and final game of a series in which the Cubs had won the first two. The Expos had come to town tied for first with the Cubs, but now they were destined to leave town in second place–one game back or three games back, depending on the outcome of the day.
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So it was that with the Canadian national anthem playing we entered a ballpark already packed to capacity. It was standing room only–and not even that in some places. From the outside, we could see people perched on the railings at the back of the grandstand, pressed against the chain-link fence. Inside, fans were everywhere. The day was hot and humid; a soft drizzle fell at times. Damp-ness was so heavy in the air that our vision of the field from deep back in the grandstand was almost misty, tinged with white, and the lights were turned on early in the game. The buzzing of the fans had a busy urgency–the sound of cicadas with human voices.
As for the Expos’ Smith, he is the sort of pitcher who has always troubled the Cubs: a thoughtful, junkballing right-hander. He has hunched shoulders and a deceptively easy pitching motion–all the more effortless for its being slightly awkward. It’s as if he weren’t even concerned about making himself look like a pitcher. Like a father throwing batting practice to Little Leaguers, his manner on the mound is such that he seems almost embarrassed to be making the hitters look bad. He erred in the third inning, however. After Jerome Walton extended his hitting streak (it stands at 24 games at this writing), Smith threw a sinker to Ryne Sandberg that never got a chance to sink. Sandberg met it solidly and it sailed into the left-field bleachers, setting off the stadium like a bomb. Our seats were high in the grandstand, only two rows in front of the standing fans, and a woman with a high-pitched voice right behind us cheered like an emergency radio message: “Ryno! Ryno! Ryno! Ryno!” It was all the runs the Cubs would need, as Sutcliffe gave way to Mitch Williams with a 3-0 lead after walking two men in the eighth. Shifting seats left us behind a girder, so that Williams’s “pitching like my hair’s on fire” motion appeared to have two parts: a normal beginning, with his high kick, and then an ending apparently divorced from anything that had come before. He’d kick on one side of the girder, then appear on the other side standing on the infield grass, sideways to home plate, pointed toward the Cubs’ dugout, looking back over his shoulder to determine the result of the pitch.
There is something exciting in well-played baseball, no matter how meaningless the game. Guillen’s play reminded us of this essential point, as did Richard Dotson’s pitching. He made only one real mistake, allowing a monstrous solo home run to Oakland’s Mark McGwire in the fourth inning. He departed then in the seventh inning, turning a 2-1 lead over to the bull pen, and there was something sad in seeing him march off the field to strong applause and then accept his teammates’ congratulations one by one, where the Cubs had met Sutcliffe at the dugout steps en masse and made their congratulations effusive. When the ninth inning came, and Bobby Thigpen took the mound, there was a crisp excitement in the air; where it came from, who knows. Thigpen, however, gave up a leadoff double to pinch-hitter Jose Canseco (kept out of the starting lineup by still more injuries) and then an RBI single to pinch-hitter Ron Hassey to tie the game–extra innings. Yet one pleasant thing about Comiskey Park is that, unlike at Wrigley, they keep selling beer through the ninth inning, so that fans don’t get parched just because the game happens to be unusually interesting. So we bought a beer, lit another cigar, and sat back.
