The Cubs cannot lose at home. Just can’t. Not allowed. Even when things get reeeeeeeal scary. Because Wrigley Field is there to help them.
Kyle Hendricks was really awesome tonight, yielding basically one well-blasted ball and that was it. Offensively, the Cubs mostly made hay with homers on a night with the wind blowing out – Javy Baez twice, Ian Happ, and Nick Castellanos.
Things got real thorny in the 8th when Steve Cishek, up four runs, didn’t get a key strike call (the zone was a mess for both teams all night), and then got into a long battle with a guy named Martini, who ultimately homered on pitch 11 to score a couple. Marcus Semien immediately hit his second homer of the night on the next pitch. And then Cishek walked the next guy to put the tying run on first before he was pulled. The runner ultimately got to third base before Brandon Kintzler got out of the inning.
Then the 9th was a roller coaster, because Kintzler couldn’t stay in (he looked to feel something in his pec … great), and Kyle Ryan couldn’t get through the 9th smoothly. It took new guy David Phelps getting Semien to fly out to left with two on to end it.
That was extremely unnerving. SPORTS!
Also, given that Javy Baez’s ultimately decisive two-run homer in the 7th absolutely would not have gone out without the wind, the ending was all the more Friendly Confines: