The Night It Happened, Playing with Masks, Polanco’s Turf Monster, and Other Cubs Bullets

Apr 01, 2020

The intros here to the Bullets have become challenging when so much of the world is shut down and daily life at home is equal parts monotonous and chaotic (which could only make sense in the quarantine context). I keep improving my various coffee recipes at home, so I guess there’s that.

Marquee’s rewatch of the 2016 Cubs postseason run wrapped last night with Game 7, aka the greatest game ever played. There’s nothing new I can show you from the game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy more of it right now:

Kyle Hendricks led @MLB with a 2.13 ERA in 2016.

Then he posted a cool 1.42 ERA in the postseason. pic.twitter.com/kyDqJg9Dof

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 1, 2020

"I'm in a glass case of emotion." pic.twitter.com/rPyRJhvBMz

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 1, 2020

https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1245191395951947776

The greatest game ever played. #ItHappened pic.twitter.com/smFZKDzx5T

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 1, 2020

The greatest night of my sporting life. I can't be sure if that's *actually* the back of my head, but that's right about where I was after fighting through/celebrating among hundreds of thousands of other revelers. Magical.
Thanks for the pic, @WatchMarquee. #Cubs #ItHappened pic.twitter.com/RvRDF3p5Vn

— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) April 1, 2020

With players in South Korea and Japan getting back to baseball action with a number of restrictions in place, you’re going to see more and more MLB players coming to terms with various oddities that might be required for baseball in the States:

D-Backs' Ahmed would wear mask to play baseball https://t.co/WlSZAKLMez pic.twitter.com/viUkqQhGRm

— theScore MLB (@theScoreMLB) March 31, 2020

I suspect that most players would say fine, whatever, if the mask was the thing necessary to get back on the field, as has happened in South Korea. It really will just depend on the state of the recovery at the time baseball tries to start staging activities again. Masks? Maybe. It could help slow infections among ballplayers. Widespread – possibly daily – testing of all players for COVID-19 throughout Spring Training Part Two and the season? Absolutely. Most of “regular” life is simply not going to be able to resume until we have the rapid and widespread ability to test folks. Production continues to ramp up, but we’re not even close to there yet where post-outbreak-containment (testing, tracking, contact-tracing, etc.) can be deployed. Hopefully we’re in a logistical place for that as a country by summer.

This is just never not fun to remember:

Remember when the Cubs won because Gregory Polanco just … fell down? pic.twitter.com/FdldK7WWi5

— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) March 31, 2020

You are reminded that the 12th inning in that crazy game played out exactly – and I mean *exactly* – like the 10th inning, except Gregory Polanco successfully threw out Starlin Castro that first time, which makes the turf monster moment 10x more insane. From the EBS that day:

The Cubs had a chance to walk it off in the 10th, with the bases loaded and one out following a Miguel Montero single that moved Starlin Castro to third (then a Jorge Soler intentional walk), but Matt Szczur popped out to right, and Castro was thrown out, easily, by Gregory Polanco trying to score.

In the 12th, Miguel Montero singled Castro … to third … and Soler was … intentionally walked … am I going crazy or is this the exact same thing? Then Szczur popped ANOTHER one to Polanco.

Who fell down.

I still think about this headline a lot:

View this post on Instagram

I still think about this a lot.

A post shared by Bleacher Nation (@bleachernation) on Mar 31, 2020 at 10:45am PDT

Pat Venditte, now 34, pitched mostly at AAA for the Giants last year (quite well), but only got a few big league innings. Keep the dream alive!

We have had Amazon Prime going back to the days long before they had a video streaming service – remember when it was just about free shipping and two-day delivery? – so I sometimes forget to, like, actually go look at Prime to see if there’s something I want to watch. Give it a look, as I am right now. I am planning to start ‘Hunters’ soon. #ad

Budweiser put together a very good spot:

Latest podcast episode is out:

The latest from Onto Waveland is out – subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts. @TheAthleticCHI @PJ_Mooney @sahadevsharma https://t.co/wgNC0NJDAp

— Brett Taylor (@Brett_A_Taylor) April 1, 2020

written by

Brett Taylor

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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