Your Official Live 2016 World Series Thread---Game Two

[musiclady]

A little life for the Tribe??  A little hope???   Maybe????

5-1 better than a shut out, and no no hitter for Arietta.

[musiclady]

I think I know how Cubs fans felt last night.

Whew............. 

[EasyAce]

Maybe the key for the Indians is to let the Cubs load the ducks on the pond---the Cubs just keep stranding
ducks on the pond for the most part.

[Wingnut]

I think I know how Cubs fans felt last night.

Whew............. 

Yeah.  Sucks don't it?  :(

[musiclady]

Yeah.  Sucks don't it?  :(

Shore do.....

NOTHING is going right.  They haven't played this badly in the entire post-season.

There's still a little time, but they have to pick up the pace BIG time, and it's just not happening.

[EasyAce]

Lost my connection for a spell but the Cubs have evened it up at one apiece
5-1 your final.
On to the Friendly Confines . ..

[Polly Ticks]

Shore do.....

NOTHING is going right.  They haven't played this badly in the entire post-season.

There's still a little time, but they have to pick up the pace BIG time, and it's just not happening.

Side note about the pace (of the game, not of the Indians or Cubs)...

Per the box scores,  Game 1 lasted 3:37 and Game 2 was timed at 4:04.  What happened to all those efforts to increase the pace of the game?  I'm not a big fan of that, generally speaking, but it does kind of stink that my 11-year-old son who like to watch baseball with me has to go to bed on a school night around the 6th or 7th inning.

[Gefn]

While I'm happy the Cubs are in it, and I want them to win it, I can't watch. My dad would have loved this series. I can't cry anymore. I don't have any more tears left.

But I do want the Cubs to win.
 

[Polly Ticks]

While I'm happy the Cubs are in it, and I want them to win it, I can't watch. My dad would have loved this series. I can't cry anymore. I don't have any more tears left.

But I do want the Cubs to win.
 

@Freya
 

[musiclady]

Side note about the pace (of the game, not of the Indians or Cubs)...

Per the box scores,  Game 1 lasted 3:37 and Game 2 was timed at 4:04.  What happened to all those efforts to increase the pace of the game?  I'm not a big fan of that, generally speaking, but it does kind of stink that my 11-year-old son who like to watch baseball with me has to go to bed on a school night around the 6th or 7th inning.

And some adults are in the same boat.  My sister, a HUGE Indians' fan, went to bed last night when it became obvious that we were going to lose....... and the start time was an hour earlier because of a storm system coming through.

Why can't they start games at 7 and be done by 10? or 8 to 11?  I suppose the slow pace is good for the lazy, hazy days of summer, but when you've stretched the season into November you need to pick up the pace.  ^-^

[musiclady]

My husband worked sporting events and he said baseball was the worst because it could go on forever and ever. 

Anyway, I have no favorite in this series.  So I will cheer for your team.  Last year when it was the Royals my neighbors would literally go outside and yell when they won each game.  When they won the series it was CRAZY!!!  A good crazy.  But I mean it was fireworks and everything, for hours.   Did I care?  Not a lot.  I mean....that's very nice and all.   .  They woke me up with their noise.

Our neighbors shall not hear a peep from us after/when/if the Indians win the Series. 

[EasyAce]

Side note about the pace (of the game, not of the Indians or Cubs)...

Per the box scores,  Game 1 lasted 3:37 and Game 2 was timed at 4:04.  What happened to all those efforts to increase the pace of the game?  I'm not a big fan of that, generally speaking, but it does kind of stink that my 11-year-old son who like to watch baseball with me has to go to bed on a school night around the 6th or 7th inning.

Compelling your son to regulation bedtime during the World Series could be construed as child abuse. ;)

But seriously. If you want to know what's up with the pace of the game, figure out a way to convince baseball government to
convince, in turn, the advertisers who insist on helping to fill three-minute ad blocks to pitch in and help shorten game
times. Which amounts to convincing baseball government that the good of the game isn't always the same thing as making money
for the owners. ;)

[EasyAce]

Enter the Schwarbinator
By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/27/enter-the-schwarbinator/

This is what we knew about Kyle Schwarber before this World Series: He made a splash—no, a tidal wave—in last
year’s postseason. Including his parking of a meatball from St. Louis’s Kevin Siegrist atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard in
the seventh inning of the division series clincher.

Before he had a chance to calibrate his bat this season, Schwarber was 0-for-4 when a horrible outfield collision destroyed
his knee and took him out for the year. His Cubs, who were only this year’s World Series favourites coming off last year’s
winter meetings (that’s a joke, folks, kind of), lived up to their lofty expectations for once. And maybe for all time.

Schwarber spent the season on the trainer’s table, in the infirmary, a big, bopping kid who looks like a wrestler and wasn’t
expected to be seen in a Cub uniform until spring training 2017 no matter what the Cubs ended up doing before then.

Then he became a whisper up from the Arizona Fall League, after his doctors cleared him to at least think about hitting again.
He swung at a few thousand pitches from assorted pitching machines and coaches. He played two games for the Mesa Solar
Sox. And suddenly the whisper included that he’d be activated for the World Series.

Remembering Schwarber’s tape measure thumping last fall, Cub Country went ecstatic. The rest of the world, including the
Indians, probably, went, Are you nuts?!?

The Cubs were so nuts they slotted Schwarber into the DH hole for Games One and Two in Progressive Field. Corey Kluber,
Andrew Miller and company may have pinned the Cubs’ ears back in Game One, but Schwarber gave them and the audience
a jolt when he jerked one off Kluber that hit the right field fence on the fly and missed being a bomb by about a foot.

Schwarber didn’t launch any ICBMs in Game Two Wednesday night. He didn’t have to. Two hard-shot RBI singles up the same
pipe in the third and the fifth, not to mention moseying on home with the fifth Cubs run on a ducks-on-the-pond walk to
Addison Russell in that very fifth, were more than enough.

Manager Joe Maddon and the entire Cub administration risked looking like the fools of the month, if not the century, by
activating Schwarber. He’s only spent the first two games making them look like geniuses. If only that could turn him overnight
into at least a competent defender—he’s known to play the outfield like a dump truck with two flat tires—with the World
Series shifting to Wrigley Field Friday night.

Even off the bench Schwarber must already have the Indians thinking, when they’re not praying. He made things look too
easy for a guy who hadn’t seen live major league pitching since early April. Just don’t tell him that. “No, it’s not that easy,
first off,” the Schwarbinator said after the 5-1 win. “Baseball’s a crazy game.”

Game Two Exhibit A: What the Indians did to the Cubs in Game One—out-pitch and out-hit them while wreaking havoc
courtesy of a few Cub mistakes—the Cubs did to the Indians in Game Two, and with an almost identical win result.

Exhibit B: Jake Arrieta, perhaps addled early by the chill and his not having pitched in a little over a week, trying to find the
handle on his repertoire yet surviving a testy Indians first, then flirting with a no-hitter while retiring fifteen out of the next
sixteen batters he faced.

“I kind of had my foot on the gas a little too much at the start, trying to do more than I needed to,” Arrieta told reporters after
the 5-1 win was banked. “Then I really got back to just executing good pitches towards the bottom of the strike zone.”

Jason Kipnis shot a one-out hit through the second base side in the bottom of the sixth that traveled deep enough in right
center to afford him a double. ”I knew I hadn’t given up a hit all the way to the sixth,” Arrieta said. “That’s really not the
focus in a game like this. Whether they get a hit or not really doesn’t affect the way you continue to approach that lineup,
especially with a five-run lead.”

For Kipnis, it was a huge relief. He’d gone 4-for-11 in the Indians’ division series against the Red Sox, but 2-for-28 until
he punctured Arrieta. “I hadn’t seen first base in a while,” he cracked after the game. “I forgot where it was. I was confused
where to go after that.”

Exhibit C: The Cubs manhandling six Indians pitchers including starter Trevor (Dem Drones) Bauer. They jumped Bauer in
the first with Kris Bryant’s one-out rip of a line single to right and Anthony Rizzo’s followup ripper down the right field line,
bounding off the wall to turn into an RBI triple and an immediate 1-0 Cubs lead.

Schwarber then ripped an 0-2 service down the third base line and missed an RBI by inches as the ball landed just outside
the third base line, before his big swinging strikeout ended the inning at 1-0, Cubs. Not that Bauer was in for a simple
evening from there.

He shook off a leadoff infield hit by Javier Baez in the second, a high chopper third baseman Jose Ramirez couldn’t barehand
as he hustled down from third, with a pair of fly outs and a sharp line out to right. He had two outs in the third when he walked
Rizzo, surrendered a cue shot single to Ben Zobrist, and Schwarber’s RBI single on 3-0 before nailing Baez swinging on a low
slider, maybe his best pitch of the night.

As Arrieta slowly but surely found and secured the handle on his pitches, the Cubs continued pecking at Bauer and the Tribe.
A fourth-inning leadoff walk to Willson Contreras led to a swift double play, but Russell lined Bauer’s first pitch up the pipe for
a single and the end of his night. Zach McAllister relieved to strike out Dexter Fowler for the side. That’d teach him.

The Cubs added him to their victim list in the fifth. A one-out walk to Rizzo preceded Ben Zobrist lining one to the right field
corner. This time, Indians right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall fell into a slide trying to stop the ball on the ricochet, and Rizzo hustled
home with the third Cub run while Zobrist took possession of third base. Then in came Shaw, and up came Schwarber to swat
his second RBI single of the night.

After the Schwarbinator took second on a wild pitch, Contreras grounded one to the right side, where Kipnis, the Indians second
baseman who’s playing through what’s left of an ankle sprain incurred in the Indians’ pennant celebration, juggled, juggled,
and finally threw a hair too late to beat Contreras to the pad. Another unintentional walk, to Jorge Soler after opening with strike
one, set up ducks on the pond for Russell and his RBI stroll.

Kipnis’s breakup of Arrieta’s no-hit bid led to the only Indians run of the night, when he took third on Lindor’s chopper to second
and came home on a wild pitch. Arrieta had been a little wild all night but they called it effective wild, since the Indians mostly
had no clue what to do with him after the first and his defenders did a little more of their usual.

After Indians first baseman Mike Napoli delivered his first Series hit, a clean single, Mike Montgomery took over for the Cubs.
He let the Indians tease him but nothing more, particularly when he struck out Carlos Santana on a wind-whipping swing with
two on and two out in the seventh.

Napoli’s two-out single in the eighth prompted Maddon to go to Aroldis Chapman, who promptly blew Ramirez away on strikes
for the side, then finished tidily enough around a two-out walk in the ninth.

“We had a big win and no one got too high in here,” Napoli said after the game. “No one thought we’d won the World Series.
We have to bounce back like we did Tuesday. It’s a best of seven series. You’ve got to win four games before they do.”

“We gave up nine hits, eight walks and two errors, and we only gave up five runs,” said Indians manager Terry Francona, after
his first World Series loss as a manager, almost a decade after the second of his two Series sweeps managing the Red Sox. “We’re
probably pretty fortunate because there was a lot of traffic.”

That’s nothing compared to the expected traffic jams getting to Wrigley Field Friday night. World Series baseball hasn’t been
played there since the ’45 Series. And a lot of those people will want to get a piece of the Schwarbinator while they’re at it.

[Wingnut]

Game 3 back at Wrigley!