As a Met fan of a certain age, few things are as simple and satisfying as beating the Cubs by a healthy margin in a summer game at Wrigley Field.
I have nothing against Chicago — hell, I was just there and had a grand time. I love Wrigley Field’s essential simplicity, which still shines through more than a century of additions and supposed refinements. I’ve enjoyed talking baseball with Cubs fans in Wrigley’s seats and away from them. I’m not sent into a frothing rage by the mere existence of the Cubs, which happens when I spend too long considering the Yankees or the Marlins.
But still, they’re the Cubs.
I grew up on tales of the Cubs as our antagonists in the summer of 1969 — the black cat, Ron Santo clicking his heels, Leo Durocher shooting his mouth off, Randy Hundley‘s disbelieving leap, and all the rest. I was a babe in arms that summer, but I consumed the stories so many times as a child that pretty soon I knew them by heart. As a kid the Cubs were the team I hated in the NL East — and oh, how it stung when the Mets emerged from their years as baseball’s North Korea in 1984 only to have the Cubs throw them off the mountaintop at summer’s end.
All that’s long gone now — when I explained to my kid that I hate the Cubs and Cardinals and have to reminded to get worked up about the Braves, he was understandably nonplussed. I suppose childhood trauma leaves a mark deeper than anything that Bobby Cox or Chipper Jones could inflict on tougher adult skin. (Let’s agree to ignore the fact that Atlanta being in the NL West while Chicago and St. Louis were in the NL East never made a lick of sense.)
The Cubs are now in the Central and have dwindled into a curiosity, but when I see the Mets in road grays at Wrigley, with the fans right on top of them like spectators at a gladiatorial exhibition, my heart starts thumping just like it did when I was seven. And on summer nights when the Mets start ripping line drives into the ivy and depositing them into that quaint-looking basket, my heart grows at least seven sizes bigger.
The Mets did all of that Thursday night in what had been muttered about as a trap series after taking two of three in Atlanta but sure didn’t start that way. They strafed poor Keegan Thompson and vague relation Mark Leiter Jr., while Carlos Carrasco baffled the Chicago hitters en route to winning his 10th game of the year. I admit most of this year’s Cubs could be winners of a fan contest for all I recognized them, but that doesn’t matter — they’re still Cubs and that’s enough to leave my teeth bared and make me bay for their speedy demise.
(Can we note, by the way, that Carrasco is 10-4? Or that the Mets are now a season-high 22 games over .500? For all our screaming that the sky is falling, it seems to be up there intact and in fact quite a bit higher above our heads than we might have guessed.)
Anyway, the Mets beat the Cubs in pretty much every aspect of a baseball game and I enjoyed it thoroughly, though we’ll give the home team a point for the cup-snake tradition, spied upon by a bemused Gary and Ron and explored in Steve Gelbs’s wonderful interview with a young man named Jake. Jake was pretty much a certain slice of Chicago transmuted into human form: sweetly mindful of his family, dogged in pursuit of a questionable goal, well-served in a beverage capacity, not entirely factually engaged, and somehow completely charming. (Jake thought it was the eighth inning; gently informed by Gelbs that it was the seventh, he smoothly issued this blithe non-correction: “Basically the eighth, Steve.”)
It’s a great town. Doesn’t mean I want to beat its National League team any less. It’s been that way since I was seven and it’ll be that way when I’m 77.
And let’s not forget this:
“Mets fans are really, really obnoxious,” Ricketts told a Cubs Convention audience Saturday at the Sheraton Grand Chicago. “When Hosmer’s left hand went across home plate,” Ricketts said, “my wife jumped up, pointed at the TV and she said: ‘Screw you, Matt Harvey! Screw you, Mets fans!’
So, yeah, very happy to see the Cubs and their vile owners lose 7 straight and be ground into the soil of Wrigley by the Mets tonight. Not that I have any strong feelings on the subject, mind you.
came here to say something like this.
have always been a cubs hater since 69 – was at the black cat game – and the years have not faded the detesting. my son doesn’t get any of this because they’ve not been division rivals in his lifetime.
this is also why the loss to the giants in the 2016 wild card game was so devastating. because in my bones i know the mets would have gone on to chicago and won there. and there would not have been the tear in the cosmos that permitted the cubs to become champions, which presaged the election, days later, of the individual ricketts supported for president. this is what happens when the cubs win the series.
For me, the Cubs are basically just another team. My viscerality is reserved for the Braves, the Marlins, the Phillies, and, always and forever, the team across the river that shall not be named.
I must say, the Lindor-to-Guillorme-to Alonso DP machine was running quite smoothly tonight. As it has most nights.
Carrasco’s 10-4 does speak to how he’s mostly pitched quite well, but occasionally gotten hammered (hence the higher-than-you’d-like ERA).
Also of note is Pete tying Wright’s RBI before the All-Star break record at 74. Not a record I was really aware of before this year, but I wouldn’t mind Pete claiming it here in these last Wrigley games of the “first half.”
It was cool to see number 48 pitch last night, too. Nice of MiLB.tv to let us watch for free.
The Mets reached 21 games above .500 for the first time at 44-23 and then didn’t reach 22 games above .500 until 56-34. That shows less the sky falling than the Mets stopped rising while the Braves have been shooting up. It seems the Mets are rising again.
Mid-season magic number: A win today guarantees 1st place at the all-star break.
The Mets are scoring more with HRs and less with small ball (i.e., baseball as it ought to be) of late. I don’t like that, but it’s better than the frustrating RISP LOB when Mets small ball stalls.
I look forward to today’s match-up in a day game at Wrigley Field both for Walker making his final statement as an all-star candidate (who should be good for an inning on July 19) and a hyped up Stroman.
Alonso’s HR was a relief. It’s been a while. Tying Wright’s obscure team RBI record is nice, but Alonso should have passed the mark a week or more earlier. He’s been a RISP LOB culprit as much as anyone.
The Lindor-Guillorme 6-4-3 DP is an example of why I want Guillorme to stay at 2nd base even if his increased playing time comes at the expense of Escobar. Which means McNeil at 3B, instead. While Guillorme’s defense is elite at 3B, too, we’d lose out on his highlight tags, pivots, and assists as a middle infielder.
Seeing those creatures with their yellow hard hats in the Wrigley bleachers last night brought it all back.
I was at Wrigley last night and have questions about two things that weren’t announced to fans:
1. With runners on first and second, a Cubs batter tried a sacrifice bunt. Despite a successful force at third, the umpire initially signaled all runners were safe (catcher interference?). Then Buck talked to the umpires and the runners were returned to their bases (and the batter to the batters box). Can someone explain what happened?
2. When Carrasco came to the mound in the 5th or 6th, he motioned for the bat boy, who came out to the mound and started collecting something unseen on the dirt (someone around me guessed sunflower seeds). The umpires all had a look too. At the end of the game, Cubs ground crew came out and got on their hands and knees and combed the dirt. What happened there?
Thanks!
1) The batter fouled his bunt attempt against his leg while in batter’s box, thus dead ball. But umpires missed it and called catcher’s interference on Mazeika. Buck intervened and call was corrected on review.
2) Somebody’s necklace exploded and they were picking up beads or jewels. Don’t know whether that was from someone swinging hard or from runner sliding at home. Either way, a silly new “problem” in baseball. I wonder how many accoutrements Ces left in batters’ boxes over the years!
About 20 years ago I was in Chicago for work. We finished early and my coworker and I went to Wrigley. Paid 15 bucks to park in someone’s driveway and bought two bleacher tickets from a guy scalping from his car on Addison.
The young Cubs pitcher had a no-hitter going and it started pouring. They halted the game but didn’t want to call the game. This began a 2-1/2 hour rain delay. This was the drunkest I have ever seen people in public. Absolute hysteria. I saw a guy fall into a trough urinal, another guy keel over like a dead tree while his friends laughed uproariously. SO MUCH FUN.
Of course the pitcher (maybe Prior?) gave up a hit as soon as the game Re-started. Easily my most memorable non-Mets game attended. Great ballpark, really fun fans.
This question would be easier to answer if the doubleheader was on Sunday: I wonder if the managers will be more willing to use relievers on both ends of the doubleheader tomorrow knowing the all-star break starts the day after next. (Pitching both games tomorrow and on Sunday is too much to ask, even with the all-star break.)
His delayed start makes it less likely Walker would pitch in the all-star game, but the 3rd day after a start is usually a bullpen workout, so it’s not impossible.
Yeah, 1984, a season dwarfed by what came after, but for Mets fans of a certain age, 1984 was magic. I was too young in 1969, and just a kid in 1973, so I came of real baseball age during the Dark Era, thus 1984 marked the first time I’d experienced a real pennant chase. And the Cubs broke our hearts in the end, but it wasn’t nearly as intense as the blood feud with the Cards in 1985.
What I’ll never forgive the Cubs for was how they just rolled over and died in the 2015 NLCS. They made it too easy, and when the World Series started the Mets had lost that intensity that gets you through the post-season. I was just totally dumbfounded by how the Mets just crushed them, not one of those games was in doubt for even a second. It was the most dominant Mets playoff showing I’ve ever seen.
I’m kinda liking the Cubbies right now.