When word got out that Jim Bullinger would be the Opening Day starter for the Cubs against Cincinnati’s Jose Rijo, the reaction was pretty nearly unanimous. Embarrassed chuckles gave way to full-scale guffaws.
This one promised to be the biggest mismatch since Nixon-McGovern.
And it was. Only the underdog won. The Cubs, behind six shutout innings from Bullinger, rolled to a 7-1 win over the supposedly unstoppable Cincinnati Reds, near-unanimous picks to walk away with the National League Central division.
Bullinger and reliever Mike Perez combined to hold the Reds to seven hits in front of a stunned near-sellout crowd of 51,033.
“I still think there’s a little doubt in people’s minds about whether I can be a consistent starter in the major leagues,” admitted Bullinger, a converted shortstop with a 9-10 lifetime record coming into the game. “My job is to remove that doubt.”
He took a small, but significant step by leading the Cubs to their ninth consecutive win in a road opener. The Cubs are now 54-40-2 in Opening Day games this century and have won 18 of 28 Opening Day meetings with the Reds.
The victory gave the Cubs a winning record for the first time since the end of the 1993 season, when they finished 84-78. They lost their first three games last year and never got closer than four games under .500 after the first two weeks of the season.
“This is a significantly better ballclub,” said Mark Grace, who did his part to make the Cubs and Bullinger a winner by going 3 for 5 with a run batted in and one scored in his new role as cleanup hitter.
New center-fielder and leadoff batter Brian McRae also went 3 for 5 with an RBI and found a game ball waiting for him in his locker when he came off the field.
Written on the ball in black ink was his name-deliberately misspelled MacRay as a joke-with a tribute to him for getting his first big-league hit off Rijo.
“The guys are all telling me those hits in the American League don’t count,” says McRae, who had 627 hits in four-plus seasons with the Kansas City Royals before coming to the Cubs in a trade this spring. “They kept telling me: `Welcome to the major leagues.”‘
The switch-hitting McRae was 2 for 4 with a triple batting left-handed and doubled in his only at-bat right-handed.
“Usually I’m not a good April hitter,” said McRae. “Anything I do in April is a bonus, so, maybe it’s a good thing we got started late this year.”
Actually, McRae hit .359 last April for the Royals. But before that, he was 47 for 220 lifetime in April. That’s a .174 average.
Bullinger hasn’t exactly owned April either. He was winless with an 11.05 earned-run average before Wednesday.
In the abbreviated spring training, Bullinger was 3-0, but with a 5.79 ERA, which only added to the dismay when manager Jim Riggleman picked him as the Opening Day starter.
“Spring training’s spring training,” said Bullinger. “The season’s the season. I wasn’t concerned about what happened in Arizona. I just wanted to work on a few things out there and get ready and that’s what I did.”
Bullinger got the start because he showed up in spring training more ready to pitch than some of the other starters after pitching in the Mexican winter league.
As lopsided as the final score was, the game easily could have gone truer to form with the Reds running away and hiding had Bullinger failed on one crucial pitch early. That was in the third inning, with the Cubs leading 1-0 on an unearned run, but Ron Gant batting for the Reds with the bases loaded, a full count and only one out.
Bullinger, who lives and dies with his breaking pitches, ran a fastball up and in on Gant’s fists and was rewarded with a comebacker to the mound that he turned into an inning-ending and, probably, game-saving 1-2-3 double play.
“He couldn’t have rolled it back to me any sweeter if he tried,” said Bullinger.
No he couldn’t have. And the Cubs couldn’t have started the season any sweeter if they tried.
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Next: At Cincinnati, Thursday, 11:30 a.m., WGN-Ch. 9
