GAME 7: Marlins 9 – Cubs 6
CHICAGO – The Cubs seemed cursed last night, and later they seemed predestined. Ultimately they were cursed again.
Kerry Wood began his start looking totally hittable, but he single-handedly erased his own mistakes with one swing of his bat. Yet Wood tired in the fifth and sixth while coughing up a hard-earned lead, and the doomed Cubs were overcome by the relentless Marlins.
The idiotic fan who ruined Game 6 was nowhere to be found, but his bad mojo remained at Wrigley Field last night during last night’s 9-6 defeat to Florida in Game 7. The Cubs remained vexed, if not hexed, as they extended their World Series drought into a 59th season.
The Marlins will begin the World Series on Saturday night – in either Boston or New York – after becoming the fourth team in LCS history to recover from a three-games-to-one deficit.
Wood and Moises Alou hit two-run homers in the second and third, respectively, as the Cubs rebounded from a foreboding 3-0 first-inning ditch. But the fighting Fish rallied for three runs in the fifth against Wood to take a 6-5 lead before bringing in Game 5 winner Josh Beckett to pitch.
Beckett only allowed one hit, a pinch-hit homer by Troy O’Leary in the seventh, over his four innings of relief. Ugueth Urbina finished the game for Florida.
Florida tacked on a run after chasing Wood in the sixth and two more in the seventh on a two-out double by Alex Gonzalez. A first-inning three-run jack by rookie Miguel Cabrera capped a foreboding beginning for the Cubs, who haven’t been to the Fall Classic since 1945.
Cabrera tied the game on a fifth-inning groundout to first following Pudge Rodriguez’s RBI double, and Florida went ahead for good on Derrek Lee’s two-out single to right that inning.
Alou’s go-ahead two-run homer in the third literally sent fans jumping in the streets, as the ball landed on Waveland Avenue and put Chicago up 5-3 as thousands anticipated a huge rally.
But it was Wood’s game-tying jack in the second that sent a crowd of 39,574 into complete delirium. As Wood pulled a 3-and-2 pitch from Florida starter Mark Redman deep into the left-center bleachers, fans began chucking their beers in celebration.
There was good news for the Cubs before the game even began.
“He’s not coming,” a security official told two reporters, referring to the schmuck who botched Tuesday night’s Game 6 by interfering with left fielder Alou.
The fan, identified as 26-year-old Steve Bartman in published reports, issued a press release apologizing for his overzealousness, which opened the floodgates for an eight-run eighth.
And yet, the first inning of Game 7 last night seemed like a continuation of Game 6’s eighth inning. As soon as Sammy Sosa slipped while chasing Juan Pierre’s game-opening triple to right, it seemed like the Cubs were doomed to lose.
Pierre’s leadoff triple on a 0-and-2 pitch seemed a harbinger of defeat, as the little lefty smoked a liner that one-hopped off the ivy. After Pudge Rodriguez’s nine-pitch walk, Cabrera followed by smashing a three-run homer to deep left-center on a 1-and-2 fastball off his shoetops. It was the first time in seven games the Marlins had scored in the first.
And then the unexpected happened in the bottom of the second. With one run in, a man on third and two outs, Wood faced Redman and crushed a 3-and-2 pitch into the bleachers in left-center. Unfortunately for long-suffering Cubs fans, he allowed seven earned runs over 5 2/3 innings.