Still, the sport’s cultural clout has declined this decade. Baseball emerged from the steroid-stained aughts to settle into a healthy economic space: look no further than Mike Trout’s $426.5 million deal (one that approaches the GDP of Tonga) as a sign of baseball’s financial strength. The Cubs gave America’s pastime a rare front-page moment in what was a complex ten years for the sport. In the bottom half of the inning, with the tying run on first base and two outs, Cubs reliever Mike Montgomery got Michael Martinez to hit a soft ground ball to third Kris Bryant zipped the ball over to Rizzo ending the game and setting off a cathartic celebration. The huddle paid off: The Cubs scored twice in the top of the 10th. During the stoppage, the Cubs held a players-only meeting in the weight room to lift their spirits. It seemed certain that Davis had just written the next chapter of Cubs suffering.īefore the game could head to extra innings, however, rain arrived, causing a 17-minute delay. Progressive Field in Cleveland went berserk - the Indians were trying to end a 68-year World Series draught of their own, thank you. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, and Chicago just four outs from ending the Curse of the Billy Goat, Cleveland’s Rajai Davis lined a 98 mph pitch from Chicago closer Aroldis Chapman into the left field seats to tie it up. Chicago jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the fifth inning. An estimated 75 million people tuned in to all or part of the deciding game, which was played in the final days of a bitterly contested presidential campaign. “Right now, all the air has gone out of the balloon.” But the Cubs eked out a tense 3-2 win in Game 5, and as the series shifted back to Cleveland, Chicago’s bats woke up: the Cubbies won Game 6, 9-3, dominating from the outset. ![]() “We needed today,” said one Cubs fan, John Stutz, as he filed out of Wrigley that night, before the final out. After the Cleveland Indians thumped Chicago, 7-2, at Wrigley Field in Game 4 of the 2016 Series to take a 3-1 series lead, hope seemed lost. ![]() “It’s still an absolute high point for me as a fan, and a peak that there’s nothing even close to rivaling,” Turow says three years later.Įven if you didn’t sing “Go! Cubs! Go!” after wins and spend decades throwing visiting home runs back onto the field at Wrigley, Chicago’s victory stood out as pure sports theater. He wished his dad was alive to see it he’s glad his son and grandsons did. After the Cubs clinched, novelist Scott Turow walked into the backyard of his suburban Chicago home and yelled, “It finally happened!” at the top of his lungs.
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