Can we agree that this is what it’s all about? Can both sides put aside the enmity for a second, forget that it’s not a requirement to walk away from this crosstown series bruised Sox black and Cubs blue?
Or are you of the opinion that it would require a perpetual tie between the two teams, extra-inning infinity, to produce any we-are-the-world feelings among Chicago baseball fans?
Too bad. Because this is a celebration.
What occurred at Wrigley Field on Saturday was special, give or take a relief pitcher. It was easy to forget that two middling teams were playing. By game time it was 77 degrees, and the day already was running a high fever. That can happen when the two teams play. Exciting baseball, on the other hand, doesn’t always happen.
If you’re a Cubs fans, the corny ending to the story is that Derrek Lee, who had missed the previous five games with neck spasms, came off the bench and hit an eighth-inning grand slam to help the Cubs win 11-6. Ridiculous. Improbable. All that. But true.
Cubs manager Lou Piniella had said before the game that Lee wasn’t going to play for a while as a precaution against further injury. But damned if Lee didn’t step out of the dugout, take one of the ugliest swings in human history against Sox reliever Boone Logan and then come back on a 3-1 count to drive a pitch into the right-field seats.
If you’re a White Sox fan, the story ending was haunting and desolate, and made you want to give up reading for good.
But once you put down the pitchforks, the torches and the maps to Logan’s home, you had to appreciate Saturday for pure theater, didn’t you? You had to if a love of baseball courses through your veins.
Back and forth and back again it went Saturday. The words “playoff atmosphere” are often bandied about during particularly close games, or at least during series involving rivals, and it’s usually hyperbole. But what can we say? This had a distinctive playoff atmosphere to it. A crowd of 41,101 was in its upright, locked and mesmerized position. Nobody would have blinked if Major League Baseball had broken out the red, white and blue bunting.
With the Cubs down 3-2 in the fifth, Michael Barrett hit a ball that got caught up in the excitement and the 14-m.p.h wind, tying the game. Wrigley was duly pumped. But a few minutes later, when Cubs starting pitcher Jason Marquis, who had missed an earlier bunt signal, crushed a Javier Vazquez pitch to dead center for a two-run homer, it was almost too much for the old place to take. You had strange, uneasy, recurring thoughts about falling chunks of concrete.
In the sixth, struggling Sox hitter Joe Crede answered with a two-run homer to make it 5-5. In the seventh, Piniella brought in reliever Michael Wuertz, who got Jermaine Dye to ground into a double play. It was sort of a chess match inside an ultimate fighting match.
There were Sox fans at Wrigley, a lot of them. When actor John Cusack sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch, you couldn’t make out which team people were root, root, rooting for. It came out as an indistinct roar. Maybe they were rooting for the game and not either team. You’re right. Nah.
Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, who is in the middle of one of his periodic knee-buckling slumps, hit a screaming line shot into the left field bleachers in the eighth inning to give the Sox a 6-5 lead, and a hungry press corps had its hero story ready: Hard-luck kid saves the day.
The shadows were creeping toward the pitcher’s mound, and everyone knew what that meant. Hitters would struggle the rest of the way. The ball would start in the light from the pitcher and move into the shade as it approached the plate. So why, pray tell, did Ryan Theriot and Aramis Ramirez stroke triples to right field in the eighth inning? How does that happen? After Ramirez’s triple, the Cubs led 7-6 and you figured all it meant was that the Sox would come up with some way to up the drama.
And then came Mr. Lee, who received a standing ovation for coming to the plate.
If this game turns out to be some sort of turning point in the Cubs’ season, it will be remembered for Piniella’s decision to use Lee. Had he told the truth before the game about not wanting to play his star hitter?
Did he change his mind when Lee said he felt good enough to pinch-hit? Or was Piniella engaging in some gamesmanship with Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who brought in the left-handed Boone to face Jacque Jones and instead got a heaping helping of Lee rounding first with a raised fist?
Whatever it was, it was good stuff.
“I enjoy good baseball, and today was a good baseball game,” Piniella said.
So now the Cubs have won the first two games in the series, with the third set for Sunday. Days like Saturday are what it’s all about.
“Obviously, it’s a little more exciting to play in,” Lee said, “but this win is not any better than beating another team.”
Don’t interrupt the romance, Derrek.
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rmorrissey@tribune.com
