Heartbreak in Wrigley: Three Walk-Offs and a Rout
by William Meiners
Benico del Toro has a few good lines in “One Battle After Another.” In a scene where he’s helping Leonardo DiCaprio’s character on a jailbreak, del Toro tells him, “Don’t go dark on me, Bob.” Shortly thereafter, when cops catch up to him after Bob drops and rolls out of the passenger-side window, the getaway driver confesses that he’s had “a few small beers.”
Setting aside the few brews, I can speak to darkness. Boy, can I go dark. Like before they had lights at Wrigley (and I remember the evening that changed, 8/8/88, with someone commenting on the palindrome date as we clocked out from the Bull Gang at Purdue). My own sadness may just be a sidekick to ADD and all this shame before they created terms like neurodivergent writers, which sounds fancier than someone just being a “little off.”
You hope that something like baseball won’t send you into a tailspin, but you never know. With the weekend sweep in Pittsburgh still stinging, the Reds tapped Chase Petty (from AAA Louisville) for a spot start on Monday night. Aside from Seiya Suzuki’s homer following two walks, effectively chasing him from the game, Petty pitched well enough to win. A solo homer in the third, from JJ Bleday, and Ke’Bryan’s two-run basket shot in the fourth had staked the visitors to a three-run lead.
Both bullpens held for a few innings before the Reds scratched out a go-ahead run in the top of the eighth. In the bottom of the ninth, however, Pete Crow-Armstrong, who sounds like a hyphenated version of the All-American Boy, smacked a triple off closer Emilio Pagán that Dane Myers missed by inches in the ivy. A sacrifice fly tied it, and Michael Confronto hit an opposite field shot to win it.
Bleday homered again in the first inning on Tuesday. Nathaniel Lowe followed suit in the sixth, putting the Reds up 2-0. Cubs managed singletons in the seventh and eighth to notch it. Pagán might have thrown one pitch in the ninth before falling to the ground with a hamstring injury (oh, if my hamstring could sing…). In the extra frame, consecutive strikeouts kept the Reds ghost runner on second. Michael Bush hit a bouncing grounder that ate up Elly De La Cruz behind the second base bag for a second walk-off win for the Cubs.
I picked up my son James from school on Wednesday and we drove to Chicago. Manuevering city traffic, we listened in as both the Reds and Cubs scored early, with the home team taking a 2-1 lead. We met my old friend Rus Bradburd, writer, former basketball coach that’s about as “sport literate” as anyone, at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Bistro. Rus played his fiddle in a circle of Irish musicians, and I chatted with Frank, a guitarist and one of the Muck Brothers I saw play at Gunther Murphy’s in my own Chicago days 30 years ago.
James and I sat at the bar, he with his fish and chips and me with a Guinness French onion concoction. Between the music and a few small beers it stands out as a wonderful Wednesday evening, as much as any I’d had in the Windy City. I kept an eye on the Cubs, who seemed to be in control, scoring another pair of runs in the fourth. Matt McClain’s right-field shot cut the lead in half in the fifth.
We said our farewells to Rus before scooting up to our hotel in Evanston. I can’t remember if we were already in the car for Spencer Steer’s homer in the top of the ninth. Reds down just one. The rest we heard on the radio as our guys exploded for three more runs, including a two-run sacrifice fly off Elly’s bat (he narrowly missed a grand slam). Oh my, Reds win this and we could see the Thursday afternoon game to earn them a split.
But the Wrigley faithful weren’t turning in early. PCA launched a two-run homer off Graham Ashcraft to tie it in the ninth. A second straight ineffective top 10th (walk, groundout double play, another groundout) left the Reds scoreless, putting one Cub duck on the pond at second in the bottom half of the inning. Sacrifice bunt, intentional walk, strikeout, and another intentional walk load the bases. Brock Burke was surely less intentional about the walk-off walk he gifted to Michael Busch. A third straight final-at-bat heartbreak.
I just wanted to enjoy the game in an historic field on Thursday. We did that in spite of a seven-run fourth where extra outs, walks, and a few singles and doubles doomed the Reds. I tried to describe Harry Caray to my eighth grader, saying a “semi-famous” person sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch. That singer turned out to be Oscar Robertson, an Indiana guy like us, and as James knew, one of the greatest basketball players in NBA history.
The swept Reds, having now lost seven straight games in the first seven days of May, are finding new ways to lose. Still, I’ll relish (hotdog pun) a bit of time alongside my son in the sun down the right field line at Wrigley Field. For sure a pleasant memory in our personal history. Maybe the Reds can manage a victory back home after going winless on the road.
William Meiners is the editor of Sport Literate. Among his summer 2026 plans are the documentation of 33 Reds’ series. That should be about 600 to 700 words every few days. If you don’t expect too much breakdown or analysis, outside of his own troubled head, you may not be disappointed. From losing streaks through high-water marks, he’ll follow the club, sometimes literally, from the reluctant spring of early May through the dog days of August. Then he’s off to something else.