IT’S MILLER TIME
Rizzo’s HR sparks 5- run 11th as Cubs move into 1st place
MILWAUKEE — If the Cubs could experience winter in April, why not October in June?
With more than a month to go before the All- Star break, the Cubs are in the kind of stretch that could set a tone for the rest of the season, if not the National League Central race.
“It feels good. It’s fun playing here,” said first baseman Anthony Rizzo, whose firstpitch homer opened a five- run 11th inning in the Cubs’ 7- 2 victory against the Brewers that put them in first place by a half- game with 99 to play.
“They have a good team. The fans are into it; they’re engaged,” Rizzo said of a surprisingly electric atmosphere for a Monday night in June in Milwaukee. “You’ve got the Cubs fans and the Brewers fans going at it all game. These are tough games. We know they’re tough games. It’s just which way the ball’s going to fall. For us, fortunately, this year, they’ve fallen our way.”
The Cubs’ eighth victory in nine games against the Brewers this season was also their 12th in 15 games overall. That surge gained them 5 ½ games on the Brewers.
Despite the series dominance, most of the teams’ meetings have been as tightly contested as this one. Even in their losses, the Brewers have held the Cubs to three or fewer runs in five of the eight.
As much as anything, that might speak to the Cubs’ huge advantage over the Brewers in big- stage games and moments over the last three- plus seasons.
“Our guys are loose cannons in the dugout. There are no tight butts,” manager Joe Maddon said. “It’s kind of interesting to listen to the conversation, even in a tight game. They’re in the present tense, and that’s all I could ask for. There’s no tight butts.”
Rizzo, who pulled out a lighter colored bat modeled after the one he used in 2013 for the late innings, agreed with the big- game calm.
“I don’t think there’s ever any sense of panic with whatever happens,” he said. “They have a guy that’s unhittable [ Josh Hader] come into the game, and we somehow scratch a run off of him [ in the eighth to tie] and no one’s fazed.”
And this was just the first of three against a team that won 18 of 28 entering the series, with three more to follow against the rival Cardinals in St. Louis, culminating with a nationally televised game Sunday night.
Hostile environments?
“We love going to places where we’re not liked,” said center fielder Albert Almora Jr., who drove in the Cubs’ first run with a twoout single in the fifth and added an RBI single in the 11th. “It brings the best out of us.”
It looked like it brought out the best of both teams in another heated, competitive game most of the night. And Ryan Braun, for one, seemed to take it personally, diving to rob Rizzo of a hit leading off the fourth and leaping at the wall in left to rob Willson Contreras of extra bases in the sixth.
Did the Brewers come into the series with chips on their shoulders?
“If I were them, for sure,” shortstop Addison Russell said. “We are who we are. There’s no hiding that. They play their style of baseball, and we play ours.”
The Brewers were on their way to a 5 ½ - game division lead over the Cubs at the AllStar break this time last year.
That’s exactly how many games the Cubs made up on the Brewers during this 15- game surge into first place.