Sports
Chicago Cubs Advance to NLCS
6-4 win over rival St. Louis Cardinals is team's first postseason clincher ever at Wrigley Field.
Two outs? No problem.
The mantra for countless confident baseball teams over the years rang true for the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday as they advanced to the National League Championship Series for the first time in 12 years with a 6-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
The win not only moved the Cubs one step closer to their ultimate goal, but buried a lot of bones.
The Cubs had never won a possible postseason series clinching game at Wrigley Field in its 100+-year history. Buried.
The team had never really had any “bragging rights” against the archrival Cardinals, watching the team from St. Louis win 12 World Series championships since the last one on the North Side in 1908. Buried.
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The Cardinals had also been quite good all-time in elimination games, having a record of more than 10 games over .500. They are now 0-1 in that category against the Cubs.
Both go-ahead runs for the Cubs came with two outs. In the bottom of the second, it took only two pitches to erase an early 2-0 lead for the Cardinals. Pitcher Jason Hammel hit a single up the middle to score the team’s first run from second and Javier Baez then belted a three-run home run to give the team a 4-2 lead.
After the Cardinals tied it with a pair of two-out runs of their own in the top of the sixth, the Cubs’ regained the lead in the bottom half of the frame when Anthony Rizzo belted a dinger to right-center field. You guessed it, with two out.
Kyle Schwarber added a homer that may still be flying in Wrigleyville in the bottom of the seventh to give the Cubs a 6-4 lead. The hit came just as fans were treated to a video of Harry Caray himself singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame on the jumbotron.
But, of course, there are still much larger bones to be buried. After all, the Cubs have made it to the NLCS before. In 1984. In 1989. And, perhaps most painfully, in 2003.
In 2015, they are here again. And Chicago is hoping for a different result.
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