Now, you can call the Cubs anything you want. If the first word that comes to your mind is, indeed, “cursed,” then go for it. Nobody can call it hyperbole now. And while you’re at it, just change the name of that goat from Murphy to Maddon.
The foolish overuse of Chapman in Game 6 by Cubs Manager Joe Maddon will now, with hindsight, be the future measuring stick for fretful over-managing. In Game 5, Chapman got a career-high eight outs to save a 3-2 win, using 42 pitches. On Tuesday, Maddon used the southpaw for a crucial out in the seventh inning. That should have been enough, since the Cubs took a five-run lead into the eighth. Yet Chapman pitched the entire eighth inning.
Then, almost inconceivably, Maddon left Chapman in to face the first hitter of the ninth inning, despite a 9-2 Chicago lead. Remember, Chapman also threw a total of 24 warmup pitches in those three innings, most of them close to 100 mph.
After that game, Tribe Manager Terry Francona had said, “We hung around enough so at least Chapman had to pitch. You never know; that might help us.”
Indeed. Maddon has done what seemed impossible. He’s made former Boston manager Grady Little look like a genius for leaving Pedro Martinez in too long against the Yanks with the 2003 pennant on the line.. .
That Cleveland came so close made this the best extra-inning Game 7 in baseball history — since 1924.
Back then, the Washington Senators rallied for two runs in the bottom of the eighth inning against the New York Giants to tie the score at 3. To start the ninth inning, Walter Johnson, 36, entered in relief, on one day’s rest after pitching a complete game. The Post’s Shirley Povich said that Johnson had nothing that day except his will. The Giants got a one-out triple in the ninth and put their lead man aboard in the 10th, 11th and 12th. But none of them scored. And Washington walked off, and whooped off, as champs in the 12th because a Senator ground ball hit a pebble and bad-hopped over Freddie Lindstrom’s head.
As always, there are alternate versions of our endings. Sometimes, we actually love the one we got.