CHICAGO – The perfect play took three seconds. It involved four men. The first is a pitcher with the ability to dot 94-mph fastballs on a dime-sized target 60 feet, 6 inches away at home plate but is so bad at throwing a ball 66 feet, 7½ inches to first base he doesn’t do it. The second is a catcher, a literal graybeard, who loves everything about baseball but especially loves to throw a ball to second base. The third is a flashy second baseman, all energy and panache, who turned the simple tag into an art form. And the fourth is the mark duped into thinking he could beat them.
Poor Francisco Lindor. The Cleveland Indians’ scouting report said he could run Sunday night. It said Jon Lester, the pitcher, the man who refuses to throw to first because when he does it inexplicably ends up in right field, was ripe for abuse from those on the basepaths, especially one as fast as Lindor, who has well-above-average speed. It said so long as a runner got the right-sized lead, the proper jump, there was nothing David Ross, the catcher, or Javier Baez, the second baseman, could do. This was Francisco Lindor’s moment. This was how he was going to help the Cleveland Indians win the World Series.
It was the sixth inning of Game 5, and Lindor had just driven in Rajai Davis, who himself stole second without so much as a throw, because Ross juggled it trying to transfer the ball from glove to fingers with a magician’s sleight of hand. Now it was Lindor’s turn to make a one-run deficit an even ballgame, and he crept toward the quarter-circle of dirt that meets the edge of the grass, planted himself, stared at Lester, leaned a little bit and took off.
There was a hush in the air at Wrigley Field, because they’d seen this minutes earlier with Davis, seen this all season with Lester’s only weakness being holding on runners, seen 108 damn years of moments like this, where the little things – the minutiae, always the minutiae – went the wrong way. And then, less than three seconds later, umpire Sam Holbrook took a step and threw a forceful right hook, Lester pointed to Ross, Ross scampered off the field with a grin, Baez picked himself off the ground, Lindor stayed there, out, unquestionably out, and the wheels of October, evermore against the Cubs, were turning right for once. And they kept turning, for nine more outs, for a 3-2 victory, the first World Series win in 71 years at Wrigley, one that sent the Cubs back to Cleveland for a Game 6, which was in doubt until they started reminding themselves of the team they’ve been for 162 games and two previous postseason series.
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Javier Baez tags out Francisco Lindor trying to steal in the sixth inning. (Getty)
There was Jason Heyward Spider-Manning the right-field wall to make a catch and Anthony Rizzo catching a pop-up that bounced off Ross’ glove and backup catcher Willson Contreras gloving a 102-mph fastball closer Aroldis Chapman spiked 59 feet. These were the Cubs who turned batted balls into outs better than any team in decades, a fundamental masterpiece of a team that somehow made chicken salad out of Lester’s yips.
“Lester gets rid of the ball quickly. Rossy has a quick release, a strong, accurate arm. Baez is the best guy I’ve ever seen putting a quick tag on a guy,” said Cubs third-base coach Gary Jones, who works with the team’s infielders. “It’s a combination of everything coming together. If all three of those things don’t happen, we don’t get him. They work in tandem, and that’s the result you get.”
Take away any one of those elements, and Lindor is standing on second base with Indians cleanup hitter Mike Napoli at the plate. Combine all three of them, and it’s baseball at its symphonic finest.
Each element is impressive considering the circumstances, which were tracked to the inch by Statcast, the delightful system that allows quantification of plays that heretofore were simply left to words. This was great, yes, but how great?
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