by Boutros Boutros Ghali
The Cubs played their final regular season game for 2015 Monday at Wrigley Field. It was supposed to be an off day, but a rain out vs the Royals earlier in the season gave us one more for the road. It did not disappoint despite having no real bearing on anything.
It was Kyle Hendricks vs Yordano Ventura in this makeup game from all the way back at the end of May. I remember there was some hand-wringing back then that the Cubs could be in a WC chase when this thing was made up, which would be a bad thing because the Royals are good.
The Royals were good last night too. Luckily, so were the Cubs. In fact, these two teams were so good, defensively at least, that they made it to the 11th inning with no runs crossing the plate.
Hendricks was shaky in the first inning, but got his shit together for six innings of good baseball. The Professor only gave up 2 hits and 2 walks while striking out 9 batters. That should be good for a win in a lot of games, but Ventura was just as tough.
The Royals pitcher went 7 innings with two hits and a walk. It was a pitcher's duel of the highest order that gave us 10 pitchers getting it done and one getting it walked off.
In the 11th inning, Danny Almonte entered to try and get the game into the 12th inning. Apparently, he's not as good when pitching to kids his own age.
The Norf Sider got the call to pinch hit for Leprechaun Rodney and he knew exactly what was coming. Deno launched a 97 mph fastball into the night and the crowd in left field.
It was party time at Wrigley Field except they partied earlier in the weekend after three losses. Whatever.
That's a short reckless recap for what turned out to be a short/long game. Even though they went 11 innings, the game only took 2 hours 49 minutes to complete. So I'll finish it up early as well. See you back here tomorrow for the recap of the Cubs vs Communists in Cincinnati.
Go Cubs!
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