The pressure was mounting. The vice was tightening. Game 5 and perhaps Madison Bumgarner were looming.
The Cubs were down to their final three outs and needed three runs to avoid a winner-take-all contest.
This was supposed to be the year, but even if you weren’t a Cubs fan, you could feel the best chance in a long time slipping away. All the momentum was with the Giants, and in the playoffs, momentum isn’t just the next game's starting pitcher.
The Cubs entered the top of the ninth inning Tuesday with a 2 percent chance to win the game, according to Fangraph’s live scoreboard.
Then Kris Bryant singled.
Then Anthony Rizzo walked.
Then Ben Zobrist hit a double.
5-3.
Then Willson Contreras drove home Zobrist and Rizzo with a single up the middle.
5-5.
You had to think the magic had run out when Jayson Heyward’s sacrifice bunt went back to the pitcher, Will Smith, setting up a 1-6-3 double play, but then Brandon Crawford, the favorite to win the National League Gold Glove at shortstop this season, threw the ball past first baseman Brandon Belt. Heyward stood on second with one out.
Then Javier Baez brought him home with a broken-bat single up the middle.
6-5.
The inning ended, Aroldis Chapman came in and closed the door with three strikeouts, and the Cubs found themselves in the National League Championship Series.
It all happened happened in what seemed to be a flash, but the impact of the top of the ninth Tuesday might be felt for decades or centuries.
The Cubs’ four-run ninth inning Tuesday night was a moment of truth. In the most dire of situations, with the weight of 108 years pressing down on their shoulders and minds racing, they came through in spectacular fashion.
If you don’t believe this Cubs team can win the World Series now, you’re never going to be converted.
You don’t win 103 regular-season games without gumption, and the Cubs proved that they can transfer that stellar regular-season form — and their steadfast belief that they can win every game they play — into the postseason.
They proved it Monday night (Tuesday morning for some) in Game 3's extra-inning loss, only made possible because of Bryant’s game-tying two-run homer in the top of the ninth. It’s easy to forget how big that homer felt in the moment when they played another half game following it and you ended up sleep deprived the next day.
The concerns about the Cubs this postseason weren’t if they could hit (they had the best offensive WAR in the National League) or if they could field (their 115 defensive WAR was 27 points higher than No. 2 and nearly double No. 3) or pitch (best starter ERA, third-best xFIP for relievers in baseball this season), it was about if they could handle the pressure of the postseason.
Make no mistake, the Giants were the biggest threat to the Cubs in the National League this year. The Dodgers and Nationals are good teams, but the Giants, with their starting pitching (which is everything in the postseason) and their even-year magic — displayed in Monday's win — were a unique threat in a five-game series. There are no toss-away games in a division series, and that only added to the incredible pressure the Cubs faced.
There’s no such thing as a curse, but that doesn’t stop anyone from thinking negatively or believing that there are forces stronger than themselves in play on that diamond when the going gets tough. Self-defeat is the biggest threat to a team in the postseason, and no team has more reasons to let the moment overwhelm them than the Cubs.
But in those proving hours Monday and Tuesday night, the Cubs came through, despite the odds being against them. This is starting to become a theme.
The Cubs are now battle tested, and they are four wins away from winning their first pennant since 1945 and eight wins away from winning the team’s first World Series in 108 years.
There’s no reason to doubt them anymore.
