The Chicago Cubs are seven wins away from ending the most famous curse in sports, which means winning a World Series for the first time in 108 years. Miguel Montero hitting a grand slam home run brought them one step closer to that goal.
This isn’t the first big moment from a Cubs player that lifted the team from a tough position in this postseason. A World Series run is made up of all these little moments coming together. Even for a team that was and an arm and a foot ahead of everyone else in the regular season. The playoffs are different. It comes down to specific players stepping up, especially when everyone else are playing way below their normal level.
Just think of the NLDS against the San Francisco Giants. The Cubs were hitting poorly throughout the four games. What made them get through? Besides the Giants own problems and the Cubs making them look bad, there was the Javier Baez home run in the 1-0 game 1 victory, Travis Wood coming in relief for Kyle Hendricks to take over the game and hit a home run, and maybe bigger than anything was game 4: The Cubs rallying from three runs down in the ninth inning, tying the game on a two-RBI hit from Willson Contreras, following by Baez again, this time with a game-winning RBI single.
Some would say this is the complete jinx article, but as Jon Lester said: There’s no talk of curses or goats in the Cubs clubhouse. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series in over a century because they were never good enough. They haven’t been to a World Series in over 70 years. Their last big opportunity was blamed on an overzealous fan, but the Cubs had plenty of other outs back in 2003 that would have given them the win against the Marlins. Again, they simply weren’t good enough, as it turned out.
Montero is more likely to be playing somewhere else next season, but it doesn’t really matter at this point. Looking too far ahead isn’t a luxury the players have. One game at a time, as the old, used, banged up sayings tend to say. And for the Cubs in the postseason so far, one day at a time usually means one big play at a time, often coming at when it’s some darkest hour kind of situation.
A postseason run is often made up of small moments coming together, completing a much bigger picture. If the Cubs do end up winning the World Series, the grand slam home run by Montero in game 1 of the NLCS vs the Dodgers could be the biggest of them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment