PLAYING FOR HOME
A WIN AND A PIRATES LOSS KEEP CUBS AT WRIGLEY ON WEDNESDAY
CUBS 1, BREWERS0
MILWAUKEE — Quintin Berry never saw the play live, but he has seen it replayed often enough over the last 11 years to appreciate how much it has to do with the fact he’s wearing a big-league uniform in the Cubs’ clubhouse these days.
He even went out of his way the first chance he got a couple of years ago to thank Dave Roberts personally.
“I told him he didn’t knowit back then, but he did something that was able to help me provide for my family and give me another opportunity to be in the big leagues,” Berry said.
“That was the thing that kind of started this whole thing.”
This whole thing is the need for speed in the playoffs — specifically the desire to carry a designated pinch runner who can steal the 90 feet that might change the course of a given October.
That’s why Berry is here, and why he will be on the Cubs’ playoff roster, just in case manager Joe Maddon needs a 26-for-27 career steals guy to steal a game.
That player was often sought, but always a luxury item, at least until Roberts nabbed the most famous stolen base in baseball history in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Yankees — leading to the tying run, an eventual victory and the Red Sox’ historic comeback from a three-games-to-none deficit.
The Red Sox don’t end their 86year championship drought that year without that stolen base.
And Berry might not have been picked up as a minor-league free agent on Aug. 24 — just in time for playoff-roster eligibility— without it.
Or acquired by the Red Sox in a trade on Aug. 27 just ahead of their 2013World Series title run. Or carried on the Tigers’ postseason roster before that, all the way through the 2012World Series.
“Think about it,” said Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer, an assistant to Theo Epstein in Boston in 2004. “In the playoffs, there’s a razor-thin margin for every game and every series. The ability to run late in the game is really valuable. All of a sudden you put a guy in scoring position and that 2-1 or 3-2 game changes completely. “The impact Dave had on that team certainly heightened the attention.”
If Roberts opened a new era for the October speed guy, the Royals last fall opened the floodgates — turning stolen bases into acts of October gluttony in a comeback wild-card win on the way to the World Series.
Terrance Gore debuted in September for the Royals and had exactly two career plate appearances before pinch running six times in the postseason and stealing three bases.
A team still has to have the roster flexibility to carry that player and feel it has the rest of the bench and the bullpen covered. But against playoff pitching, in often tight, tense games with seasons riding on outcomes, a role like Berry’s can be critical.
In Saturday’s 1-0 victory over the Brewers, Berry pinch ran for Starlin Castro after a leadoff walk in the eighth, then stole second and continued to third on the errant throw. He was stranded after three strikeouts — with a missed safety squeeze bunt by Addison Russell in the mix. But the point was made. “I hope to be able to have that kind of an impact, if that’s the job I’m given,” said Berry, who is not oblivious to the place in baseball history the Cubs are chasing this postseason— not unlike Roberts’ Red Sox.
To this day, Roberts is often stopped on the streets by Red Sox fans, thanking him for what he did that night in Boston.
“It’s a thing that can definitely change the face of history, for sure,” Berry said of a Cubs title.
And to be able to play a role in that, to help turn a critical game with a 90-foot blur late in a game?
“That would be ridiculous,” he said.