By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/20/the-most-powerful-bunt-in-cub-history-if-not-all-time/Entering National League Championship Series Game Four, even Dodger fans wondered whether the Cubs would bother showing
up. By the time the game was over, the set was tied at two games each, and the Cubs finished a 10-2 bludgeoning of the
Dodgers, Dodger fans were sorry the Cubs did show up.
Twenty-one straight scoreless innings was more than the Cubs were willing to dine on. And to think the barrage began with a
beautifully timed bunt to open the top of the fourth, by the lineup’s number four hitter, one of the Cubs on whose behalf people
were ready to send out search and rescue teams to try finding his bat.
Ben Zobrist, he who entered Game Four 1-for-10 with a double, a strikeout, and a walk all set long, batting against The Youngest
Pitcher Ever to Start a Postseason Game—they said it so often you almost forgot his name is Julio Urias—dropped a little rock in
front of the plate that Dodger catcher Yasmani Grandal didn’t have a prayer of retrieving and throwing in time.
“It felt like that spot in the game was the right time,” said Zobrist, after his Cubs finished smothering the Dodgers. “After we
hadn’t gotten any hits up to that point, I was like well, it’s time. Someone needs to do it.”
Cubs manager Joe Maddon hadn’t even thought of asking his man to bunt. “It’s always best when Benny does something
extemporaneously,” he told reporters. “Whenever I give him a sign, it never works. So I’m glad he thought of it on his own.”
Him and every citizen of Cub Country.
Who knew it might prove the most powerful bunt in Cub history? “How about the bunt gets the whole thing rolling by your
No. 4 hitter?” Maddon asked. “How unlikely is that?"
Did Javier Baez have a clue when he hit one off the end of his bat to left and saw it land for a base hit and first and second?
Did Willson Contreras have a clue when he lined a soft single to shallow left and Zobrist went for the Dodgers’ throats,
challenging left fielder Andrew Toles and forcing a throw way off line to the first base side as he hit the plate with the first
Cub run?
Maybe Jason Heyward, another of the Cubs’ batting flops to date, had an inkling when he slapped a grounder to second that
sent Baez home. Maybe Addison Russell, yet another flop with the flogger and dropped to number eight in the lineup
Wednesday night, got a bigger inkling when he drove one over the right center field fence to make it 4-0, Cubs.
“I’ve been struggling this postseason a little bit but didn’t panic,” said Russell. “My confidence was still there. I feel like I’ve
been seeing the ball well, taking some pretty good swings. So definitely wasn’t panicking. I was a little more frustrated
than anything else.”
After Cubs starter John Lackey grounded out to shortstop, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts decided his gallant boy wonder
had enough humiliation for one night. In came Pedro Baez. Landing in left field and hitting the ground inches short of
diving Toles’s glove went Dexter Fowler’s double.
Baez struck Kris Bryant out on a violent swing to end the carnage at four runs, but the Dodgers weren’t even close to
avoiding further damage. Not when Anthony Rizzo, yet another heretofore Cub bat missing in action entering Game Four,
thought he finally had a leadoff full-count walk in the top of the fifth, discovered the hard way he didn’t (and apologised to
plate umpire Angel Hernandez, in case the notoriously short-fused Hernandez thought he was showing him up by laying
his bat down), then hit one into the right field bleachers.
Lackey worked like the veteran battler he is until walking two to open the bottom of the fifth, and nobody could miss
reading his lips to see “F@cking kidding me?” coming from his mouth when Cubs manager Joe Maddon lifted him for
Mike Montgomery. Montgomery’s only blemishes would be letting ducks on the pond when Howie Kendrick pinch hit for
Chase Utley and singled to right, then surrendering Justin Turner’s two-run single which bumped off Montgomery’s glove
and through shortstop, a ball that might have been a double play ball if it reached short unmolested.
Montgomery couldn’t wait to make up for it. It only started when he joined the fun at the plate while the Cubs hung up
a five-spot on the dollars of two Dodger relievers, Ross Stripling and Luis Avilan, in the top of the sixth.
Russell opened with one out when he slapped a slow roller to second which substitution Enrique Hernandez picked up
awkwardly, aware of the speeding Russell, and threw off line allowing Russel second base. Then came Montgomery to
the plate. And into left field he lined a Stripling curve for his second major league base hit. Fowler promptly slashed a
single through first into right field scoring Russell, possible because the Dodgers foolishly held Montgomery close to
first base.
Bryant wrung Stripling for a walk to set up the ducks on the pond for Rizzo. And Rizzo ripped a liner into right center
for a two-run single and an end to Stripling’s evening. Avilan served Zobrist another nubber in front of the plate, this
one on the third base side, and Grandal out from behind the plate missed Zobrist by a step.
Ducks on the pond yet again. And Baez hit a fly to center on which Joc Pederson made a dive-and-roll catch and
Bryant scored. Pederson threw home alertly and the ball squirted past the plate, allowing Rizzo to score with the tenth
Cub run. Then Montgomery erased the Dodgers in order in the bottom of the inning on a strikeout and two ground
outs.
The Dodgers might have scored first if Adrian Gonzalez, who led off the inning with a single through second base,
had been called safe on a diving slide home off Toles’s base hit with first and second and two out. Contreras had to
field a high throw in from Heyward in right field and turn diving himself to tag Gonzalez, which he did a split second
after Gonzalez’s hand touched the plate, the gloved ball touching Gonzalez’s shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Gonzalez was heard to holler on camera, after the Cubs demanded a review. “Don’t mess it up, New York!”
But the out call stood and the Cubs caught a phenomenal break, despite several television replays showing Gonzalez
safe by a second.
As things turned out, if the proper call had been made it would have been a third Dodger run. Credit the Cubs for
accepting their breaks and then making what might have been somewhat meaningless. And, for figuring out how to
relax at the plate as much as they have in the field.
“Everybody had us buried yesterday,” said David Ross, whose Game Five job will be catching and framing for lefthander
Jon Lester Thursday night, referring to the 2-1 hole in which the Cubs were found after Game Three. “Today we’re on
top of the world.”
Burials that begin with bunts from cleanup hitters, or at least hitters batting fourth, as Zobrist insists you describe him,
can do that for you.
