PART OF BASEBALL CANNON
Schwarber’s blast the kind you could marvel over for ages
ST. LOUIS— Chicks dig the long ball. But so do guys. And when this guy saw Kyle Schwarber connect with a Gerrit Cole fastball in the third inning ofWednesday night’s National League wild-card game, launching the pellet into the sky like a tiny, wild asteroid that disappeared over the right-field wall— well, this guy got pretty excited.
It’s not just that the home run knocked in Dexter Fowler, or that it put the Cubs up 3-0 on the Pirates, or even that it was Schwarber’s third RBI of the night.
Nor was it the fact this was the first home run hit by a Cubs rookie in his first postseason game.
It was that the home run was a thing of majesty and power seldom seen in any game pitting one man against another, your best against my best.
The 22-year-old Schwarber gave the bat a bit of a flip after his swing, possibly to remind Pittsburgh Pirates ace Cole that the Cubs right fielder had just turned one of his pitches lopsided. But it also was Schwarber’s statement to himself. Hello, me. I belong.
Sure, it was only one home run. And there are hundreds hit during a baseball season.
But this was the big stage. Winor-see-you-at-spring-training. And Cole is no slouch, with the Pirates having gone 8-1 in games he’d started against the Cubs. But that blast. The ball left Schwarber’s bat at an incredible 111.3 mph (thank you, Statcast), and it traveled roughly 450 feet. That’s 1 ½ football fields, folks— if you’ve ever seen football fields lined up back to back.
And the ball might have landed in or bounced into the Allegheny River, flowing beyond the bleachers. The Allegheny’s connected to the Ohio, which flows into the Mississippi, which rolls past St. Louis. Maybe that ball’s floating toward Busch Stadium as we speak.
Schwarber had felt the pressure building before the game, and he was jacked.
‘‘The nerves really hit [Tuesday night] when I was watching the American League wild-card game,’’ he said after the Cubs’ 4-0 win. ‘‘Because I realized that was going to be us, and in less than 24 hours.’’
And it was them, and like the Houston Astros who shocked the New York Yankees 3-0, the Cubs dominated behind outstanding pitching.
But this Schwarber kid and his mammoth home run— it just makes your toes tingle. Less than a year ago, Schwarber, who’s built like a high school middle linebacker— he was second-team All-Ohio at that position— was a college kid in a dorm at Indiana.
There was a funny video out from his student days, made by one of his teammates, featuring Schwarber and his roommate as the collegiate Odd Couple, with Schwarb clearly the low-key, clean, mostly sane guy. There was also a video of then-catcher Schwarber hitting a monstrous home run to win a tournament game, a tater that must have traveled 450 feet.
So what the Cubs have here is a left-handed-hitting power phenom. Like fellow star rookie Kris Bryant this season, Schwarber didn’t start in the big leagues this spring, and since he’s been called up, he’s been moved to all kinds of positions. Manager Joe Maddon wants Schwarber’s bat in there as often as possible, especially against right-handers.
The kid is batting .667, lifetime, in the postseason, averaging a home run and three RBI per game. OK, he’s only played in one playoff game. And he may be too young to appreciate where he and the Cubs are perched right now. How could he know? He was only 9 when the Cubs gagged away the 2003 NL Championship Series to the Marlins. And he was nine years from being born when the Cubs booted away the 1984 NLCS to the San Diego Padres. So he’s pure. Just baseball.
I hesitate to say this, but with his stocky build and swift, strongman’s swing from the left side, he looks a little like Babe Ruth. A little, I said! As a lefty hitter who started as a catcher, he’s a tad like Joe Mauer. But enough of that. How about that home run? How great that must feel, to demolish a ball that way. How does it feel, kiddo?
‘‘It really doesn’t feel like anything when you hit it,’’ Schwarber answered. ‘‘[When you get] jammed or, you know, your bat breaks, you feel that stuff. But once you barrel a ball, you really don’t feel it come off the bat. You just see the trajectory and how it flies.’’ Oh, it flew. It flew the coop. Follow me on Twitter @ricktelander.