Written by Billy Witz at New York Times
As pitch after pitch played out, the goblins of past heartbreak began to creep back. If tales of goats, a fan named Steve Bartman and past playoff collapses and curses began to be revisited, another very real specter appeared in the head of Joe Maddon, the manager of the Chicago Cubs.
It had dreadlocks, a barrel chest and a history of throwing darts at his team’s hitters. It was sitting in the home dugout on Tuesday night.
“Johnny Cueto was etched all over my frontal lobe,” Maddon said of the San Francisco Giants pitcher who was itching for another shot at the Cubs in a win-or-go-home game back at Wrigley Field. “And I didn’t like it.”
There was a lot for Maddon not to like. The Cubs’ soul-crushing, 13-inning defeat the previous night seemed to have awoken the Giants, their October mojo now in full force behind the pitching of Matt Moore, who had held the Cubs to two hits through eight innings.
Three more outs remained, and three runs needed to be scored, or the Cubs would be forced to return home for a fifth game of this National League division series amid their fans’ anxious embrace.
Then the Cubs made something happen that usually seems to happen only to them. They not only got up off the mat, they seemed to crawl out from underneath it, scoring four times in the ninth inning to finish off the Giants with a 6-5 victory, winning the series, three games to one.
When Aroldis Chapman, who gave up the lead on Monday night, blew a fastball past Brandon Belt for the final out, the Cubs emptied out of the dugout and mobbed one another on the infield grass, ecstatic to be back in the National League Championship Series for the second consecutive season.
They will now await their next opponent — the Los Angeles Dodgers or the Washington Nationals — as they pursue their first World Series berth since 1945 and first championship since 1908.
In the meantime, they can relish rebounding to vanquish the Giants, who had won the 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series and a record 10 consecutive elimination games.
“Any time you can survive like that against an October giant — it’s hard to finish any team in the postseason, let alone a team with that kind of character and competitors,” said Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ president for baseball operations. “What an amazing feat, to do it like that.”
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