Williams helps Phils beat Cubs, but his thoughts are with family and friends dealing with Hurricane Harvey in Texas
PHILADELPHIA » Nick Williams has been attempting to keep his focus on the job at hand, managing to do that a little more successfully Sunday than he had been doing earlier in a series with the Chicago Cubs.
Williams, the 23-year-old rookie right fielder, keyed a comeback with a two-run home run in the fifth inning, his second hit of the day, and the Phillies went on to beat the Cubs 6-3, taking two out of three against the World Champions.
Williams had been hitless in the series until singling in the fourth, then played the starring roll in a five-run fifth inning against Cubs veteran starter John Lackey. The victorious vibes carried over into the home clubhouse after the game, but Williams took his time to talk about it.
While his teammates mingled happily, Williams was hunched on his seat in front of his locker room stall, his head turned away, intently studying text messages from home.
That would be in and around Galveston, Texas, the resort city fronting the Gulf of Mexico bearing its share of the brunt of devastating flooding brought on by Hurricane Harvey.
“I have some family and friends there,” Williams said. “I was going to contact them now. I know in Galveston, it hasn’t been crazy bad. But on the outskirts (toward) the Houston area, in Dickinson, LeMarque, they have a lot of sitting water.”
Williams was raised on Galveston Island, his parents now live in LeMarque. He knows they are safe, but also has seen enough to know the disruption and devastation will still play out in the coming days all around that coastal region.
Houston was essentially under water by the time he checked his phone and saw the images. Other areas of Southeast Texas had already been battered by Harvey and soaked by more than two feet of rain.
“It’s crazy, you know?” Williams said. “I’ve been in hurricanes before. When the power goes out, they cut the water off and things like that, and it’s ugly. It’s not the safety. I don’t think they’re in danger of drowning or anything like that, but I had a friend that said there’s just five feet of water just sitting on the highway right now. So if your house gets flooded, what do you do? Where do you go? That’s been the issue.”
Yet Williams was here, among baseball friends for the major leagues’ worst team, players in need of a spontaneous celebration. He was more than 1,500 miles away from other friends whose very lives were now plunged into uncertainty. It had been weighing heavily on the soft-spoken Williams.
“It can be tough here,” he admitted. “I’ve had some family say, ‘This should be your escape at all times, no matter what you’re going through or what’s going through your mind.’ But especially for a young player like me, things like that can be really tough. It’s always in the back of my mind, the worry of something happening there, or a tornado, anything. I’ve seen the ugly there, especially with hurricanes.”
Williams was only five days removed from his 15th birthday when the hurricane he’ll never forget slammed right into Galveston Island on Sept. 13, 2008. Hurricane Ike had taken scores of lives in Haiti and produced widespread devastation in Louisiana and Southeast Texas.
“When Ike hit in 2008, my dad’s office had six feet of water in it,” Williams said. “He evacuated, but I think I missed two months of school. It’s just a huge inconvenience and it ruins a lot of people’s lives.”
Williams is thinking about those things as he sees it play over and over again. Except now he can only see it from afar.
“It’s a worry every single year during hurricane season,” Williams said. “Every single year, because you never know.”
*** Coming off three lousy starting performances, this latest effort from Phillies pitcher Nick Pivetta didn’t begin well, either.
A throwing error by first baseman Tommy Joseph put Cubs leadoff hitter Ben Zobrist on in the first inning. Pivetta, struggling yet again with his fastball command, promptly walked still slumping Kyle Schwarber, gave up a single to Kris Bryant, another single to Anthony Rizzo and an RBI groundout to Tommy La Stella for a 3-0 Cubs lead.
Then Pivetta promptly walked the next two batters to load the bases. But it was there that he bore down and got the next two outs, leaving the Cubs to be satisfied with a three-run first inning and three sacks left jammed.
That little show of determination carried over, as Pivetta held the Cubs scoreless over the next four innings before being pulled for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the fifth, having thrown 104 pitches to that point because of the neardisaster of a first inning.
Yet Pivetta’s doggedness would be rewarded when the previously silent Phils scored five runs in that home fifth, giving Pivetta (5-9) his first victory since July 31.
“He kept battling,” Pete Mackanin said of Pivetta. “He didn’t feel sorry for himself, he goes out there and he competes. He had a lot of ... he missed location quite a bit. And the error to start the game didn’t help. Nevertheless, he came around and once again, gave us five innings which we sorely needed with our bullpen.”
That bullpen kept the Cubs roped and tied the rest of the way, helped along by an amazing triple play started by left fielder Rhys Hoskins in the top of the fifth that seemed to motivate the Phillies to bigger and better things.
It also got Pivetta out of a two-on, none-out jam.
“I can’t believe that happened,” he said. “If there’s one way I was getting out of that inning, that’s what was going to happen. Sometimes the baseball gods are just in your favor, and that’s the way it goes. That’s the first one I’ve ever been a part of, or seen live.”