Pete Crow-Armstrong felt helpless standing in the middle of the outfield.
The Chicago Cubs center fielder quickly realized he had uncharacteristically lost a fly ball in the twilight sky above Wrigley Field on Thursday night.
Crow-Armstrong almost immediately threw his hands up when Athletics catcher Shea Langeliers skied Shota Imanaga’s 0-1 splitter toward dead center field in the top of the sixth inning. The ball landed about 15 feet behind Crow-Armstrong and dribbled to the warning track.
Right fielder Michael Conforto ran it down and fired the ball back in, but Langeliers scampered around the bases for a two-run, inside-the-park homer that gave the A’s a four-run lead.
Boos broke out among the 37,419 fans. Another crushing loss, and a sweep, seemingly awaited the Cubs.
Yet the Cubs, improbably, pulled out the kind of win they might look back on in October as a turning point in their season. They rallied for four runs in the ninth to walk off the A’s in a 7-6 victory that ended an eight-game home losing streak.
The Cubs recorded more hits in the ninth (seven) than they produced through the first eight innings (four). According to team historian Ed Hartig, the last time the Cubs scored at least four runs in the ninth for a walk-off victory was Aug. 12, 2018, versus the Washington Nationals on David Bote’s grand slam.
Crow-Armstrong avenged losing the ball on the inside-the-park homer by producing the first walk-off hit of his career. He blooped right-hander Luis Medina’s 98.8 mph fastball into right field to end the game.
“There’s not much you can really do about that except hope you see it next time,” Crow-Armstrong said of the defensive miscue. “I don’t even get up there (in the ninth) if each one of those at-bats doesn’t happen. We’ve stayed in the fight all year and we’ve been fighting through those last couple weeks, but this kind of stuff is exactly what we’re capable of.”
Crow-Armstrong’s heroics wouldn’t have been possible without Dansby Swanson coming through with two outs. Mired in his worst slump since his 2017 rookie season, Swanson battled against Medina before turning on a two-strike, 99.7 mph fastball up the middle to drive in the tying run from second.
Swanson didn’t hold back his exuberance at first base.
“Raw emotion and competitive spirit is the most important thing in this game because at the end of the day, if this is a competition, this is winning and losing, and to be able to come through in that moment was so cool,” said Swanson, who was hitting .162 over his last 33 games entering Thursday.
“The conviction from the group that ninth inning, that’s who we are. Just seeing guys come out and put together the at-bats … to be able to get that off of our back a little bit was really important.”
Until the ninth, Thursday’s game had the makings of rock bottom in a season that already has experienced the highest and lowest swings.
Tensions were so elevated at Wrigley after the lost fly ball that, after Imanaga retired the next batter to end the sixth, one fan started yelling in Crow-Armstrong’s direction as he reached the bottom of the dugout steps. Crow-Armstrong backtracked up the stairs and stared at the man in the crowd.
He had heard the fan criticizing someone — Crow-Armstrong wasn’t sure if it was toward him and believed it was directed to Ian Happ — for not running after the ball that fell for the inside-the-park home run. While Crow-Armstrong figured the fan’s anger was more about the Cubs’ overall play the last few weeks, the comment bothered him. He didn’t say anything in response, though, and a teammate eventually pushed him back into the dugout.
The sequence lit a fire, and Crow-Armstrong channeled it in his next at-bat moments later.
Manager Craig Counsell spoke with Crow-Armstrong briefly between the top and bottom of the sixth and conveyed: “You can’t think about what just happened. Go have a great at-bat.”
Crow-Armstrong then led off the bottom of the sixth with his second home run in as many days and third in five games.
“In the past I might have dwelt on that, and that always ends up affecting how you go about the rest of your day,” Crow-Armstrong said. “People having my back, me not hiding from the next at-bat, yeah, I’m growing up a little bit and I’m proud of that, but I’ve got to keep it going for the rest of the year.”
Special players step up in key situations, and on Thursday, Crow-Armstrong didn’t try to do too much in the name of redemption with a victory on the line. He has a knack for putting on a show with a level of magnetism and grandeur that can be difficult to quantify.
“That’s what great writers are for, I think, is to explain all that,” Counsell said with a laugh. “It was unfortunate and it’s one of those plays where it was very difficult to see, and you feel terrible. It’s a big play, it’s multiple runs.
“It was some big moments for some players, which is a big deal. That’s the building block to me.”
