With rare exceptions, pennants are won in September rather than in April or May. Still, as recently was discovered, a team can be buried and never recover from an 0-14 start, which is what happened to the Cubs last year.
“I’m certainly glad we’ve gotten away from that topic,” manager Jim Riggleman said, referring to last year’s season-opening swoon. Riggleman pointed out the Cubs’ many new players “weren’t caught up in it.”
As anticipated, the Cubs are much improved as they seek to turn it around. They won again Saturday 3-1, beating the Montreal Expos. They also won Friday 6-2 in an emotional home opener and now have four victories in their first five games.
Riggleman is pleased, but not about to go overboard. “I feel good about it, but we can’t say it’s a good start until we put some more wins on the board,” he said.
First baseman Mark Grace wasn’t quite as timid.
“We’re not going to win 75 percent of our games–no one can,” Grace observed. “But we have a good offensive team, and it showed again today. We scored six runs on a day when runs weren’t easy to get.”
Grace elaborated.
“Look at it this way: Six runs on only nine hits,” he said after Friday’s victory. “The difference was that we had seven walks and a hit batter. This gave us a lot of base runners. And to win, that’s what we’re going need–more walks. It shows me that we’re playing more as a team.”
Riggleman agreed.
“One guy hasn’t been the key,” he said. “Everybody out there is a key. If you want to be a good club, everybody’s got to contribute.”
The biggest contributor, on offense and defense, was starting pitcher Steve Trachsel. He worked 7 1/3 innings on a yield of four hits, and also had a big day at the plate with two singles and three runs batted in.
He singled a run across during a three-run fourth-inning burst that put the Cubs ahead to stay and drove in two more runs in the sixth when the Cubs enlarged their lead to 5-1. The Expos never threatened thereafter.
The game was played in nasty weather, with a cold wind blowing in. As a result the Cubs only had one extra-base hit, a fourth-inning RBI double by catcher Scott Servais, who along with third baseman Kevin Orie seem to be the club’s most improved players.
Orie had only one hit, an infield single, but crushed two balls that might have left the park if the wind had not been blowing in. He drove one to the wall in dead center in the second, and in the seventh was deprived of a home run when his deep drive was caught against the wall in left.
As he was rounding first base, Orie put both hands to his head in disappointment, as if to say, “What’s happening to me?”
Riggleman interpreted that as a good sign. “Nothing wrong with showing emotion,” he said.
As expected, the most dramatic moments involved Harry Caray, the Cubs’ longtime broadcaster who died Feb. 18. Almost everyone in the Wrigley Field crowd of 39,102 began chanting Caray’s name with two outs in the top of the seventh.
“They couldn’t wait for us to get the third out,” Grace said. “I can understand their anxiety. I couldn’t wait either.”
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Dutchie Caray, Harry’s widow, led the crowd in the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Harry’s signature offering.
“It was unbelievable, the emotion, the electricity,” said Mickey Morandini, the former Philadelphia second baseman who was acquired during the off-season. “It was something I’ll probably never forget.”
Neither will Billy Williams, a Cubs coach and Hall of Fame left-fielder.
“It was a very emotional day, which I thought it would be,” Williams said. “It shows you the kind of fans we have. It was a day that could happen only in Wrigley Field.”