Happy Baby, Happy Clincher, Happy Days, and Other Bullets

She took a relaxed approach to her arrival, but The Littlest Girl joined us yesterday afternoon, and both she and The Wife are doing great. We’re all just resting up at the hospital right now before the joy and madness of three children descends upon us. That’ll happen quickly, as I’ve gotta leave shortly to take The Little Boy to soccer, and then come back to the hospital. The posting schedule is likely to be a little erratic through the weekend before I’m able to settle back into something approximating a routine on Monday.

In the meantime, The Littlest Girl arrived into a world where she is loved, she is safe, and she knows no other Cubs than the 2016 NL Central Champion Cubs.

It’s been a good few days.

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  • About that clincher. After a night that saw the Cubs lose their chance to nail things down in front of the home crowd, we saw the clinch come by way of a Cardinals loss in the wee hours of the next morning. It felt like it was going to be the anticlimactic end to an anticlimactic dash to the top of the NL Central, a dash the Cubs long since completed practically, if not technically. But that wouldn’t be very 2015/16 Cubs, would it? Even after the Cubs crushed all narrative desire for drama down the stretch, they still found a way to inject considerable excitement into what was shaping up to be a game yesterday that they would lose to the Brewers – their fourth straight to that hapless Brewers squad – and then have to celebrate in the wake of defeat. That excitement included a two-run comeback in the 9th inning, and then a Miguel Montero walk-off oppo shot in the 10th. There were shades of a game against the Brewers just a year earlier at Wrigley Field, in which the Cubs lost the lead in the 9th inning, only to see Montero hit an opposite field homer to walk it off for the Cubs.
  • Michael captured a lot of the ensuing celebration in his write-up yesterday, including the Cubs’ front office hanging out in the bleachers for the game (more on that here at ESPN), but here’s a little more:
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  • The Cubs-Brewers game on Thursday night, in which the Cubs first attempted to clinch the NL Central, was CSN’s highest rated regular season sports broadcast ever. The rating, 11.19, obliterated the previous Cubs record of 8.30.
  • Joe Maddon’s comments really got me like (Cubs.com): “This is unique. I’d heard it before – [a player told me] everybody should be a Cub at some point in their Major League existence if they had the opportunity. There’s nothing like it. … To play here under these circumstances, in this ballpark, with these fans is different in all the best ways.” Put it in the sales pitch materials.
  • If you missed the Cubs’ latest hype video for the clinch, I promise you’ll want to watch it.
  • If you prefer adjustable caps to the fitted variety, the Cubs’ primary cap is on sale at Amazon today.
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    written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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