Don’t flip out
Contreras’ epic bat fling simply the latest crazy episode in a City Series that has been filled with such events
Baseball’s stranger-than-truth regular season ends Sunday without any major crises having occurred in Chicago.
A few early Craig Kimbrel meltdowns, an in-game Kyle Schwarber benching and theworst-hitting team in franchise history haven’t kept
David Ross’s Cubs from their goal of making it back to the postseason.
On the South Side, Rick Renteria’s White Sox turned the corner in the rebuild, going from now here to the postseason in spite of injuries, Yoan Moncada’s early COVID-19 bout, only two consistent starters and an ulcer-inducing, final-week losing streak.
No matter what happens from here, the Cubs and Sox did what they needed to do during this pandemic-shortened season. They entertained us from start to finish with a couple of no-hitters, some late-game heroics and a lot of chirping— especially fromthe Cubs.
That incessant chirping is what has defined this Cubs’ season, for better or worse. They created a few enemies in dugouts of the Milwaukee Brewers, Cincinnati Reds and, naturally, the White Sox, who saw Renteria, reliever Jimmy Cordero and pitching coach for life Don Cooper ejected from Friday’s game after Cordero plunked catcher Willson Contreras for out-bat flipping Tim Anderson.
Renteria and Cordero said the pitch was was unintentional. But most speculated itwas in retaliation for Contreras’ epic bat flip after homering off Dylan Cease in the third inning. The bat was tossed so high it could have affected flight paths to Midway Airport.
Moments after the flip, someone in the Cubs dugout yelled “You gotta (bleeping) believe” loud enough to be heard in the press box, if not on TV. After Cordero plunked Contreras andwas ejected, the Sox dugout went berserk, a bottle of water was tossed onto the field and Cooper lowered his mask so umpires could better hear his profanities.
Cordero received a three-game suspension Saturday for throwing at Contreras, which he probably should have taken so Renteria
wouldn’t use him every day. Instead Cordero appealed and will serve it next year, when no one remembers why he did it.
Renteria was given a one-game suspension, which he served Saturday, and Cooper was fined an undisclosed amount.
As for Contreras, the Cubs catcher was unapologetic for trying to flip his bat into the upper deck, a fitting homage to Anderson, the patron saint of bat flipping.
“I’m going to keep playing theway I play and play hard formy team,” Contreras said Friday. “If they don’t likeme, that’s fine. I don’t play for other teams. If I have to do it again, I’ll do it again.”
While the Contreras bat flip and Cordero’s purpose pitch didn’t spark a free-for-all among the cardboard cutouts at Sox Park, it will go down as one of the great episodes in the annals of the City Series.
Nothing of course will eclipse “the Punch”— Michael Barrett’s tussle at the plate with A.J. Pierzynski. But the Contreras flip is at least in the same area code as Sox infielder Jose Valentin mocking the Cubs after homering in a 2001 City Series game at Wrigley Field.
Valentin imitated Sammy Sosa’s heart-tapping, finger-kissing routine in the Sox dugout afterward, posing for the TV cameras just as Sosa did after almost every home run.
It sounds innocent now, but at the time itwas considered quite scandalous. Some high-brow members of themedia even asked Valentin to apologize.
“I’m not going to apologize because I don’t think I did anything to offend anyone,” Valentin responded. “The Cubs didn’t react when it happened. … Sammy’s got no problem with it, so I won’t say I’m sorry.
“If the rest of them want to take it personally, that’s their problem.”
“That’s their problem” is the unofficial city motto, and that’s theway it should always be in any Cubs-Sox series— a no-apologies rivalry since interleague play came into existence in 1997.
I’ve never heard any Cubs fan apologize for pouring a beer over an obnoxious
Sox fan’s head at Wrigley Field or any Sox fan showing remorse for punching a clueless Cubs fan in the bleachers here on the South Side.
Times change, and theworld obviously is very different than inwas in 1997. But even a pandemic can’t make these two fan bases get along.
Major League Baseball’s brilliant idea of scheduling this second round of the City Series for the final regular-season series proved prescient, as the Cubs were trying to clinch a division title on Sox turf on the second-to-last day of the season.
The only thing Cubs and Sox fans love more than their teams winning is making the other guys miserable.
Unfortunately having no fans in ballparks took away from this year’s City Series. Even though most of the games were interesting, imagine howthe Contreras-Cordero episode would’ve played out with 40,000 people screaming during the ejections.
Truthfully, all Cubs-Sox games belong in the middle of the summer, with big crowds, cold beer and trash talking from both the dugouts and the stands.
Maybe next year.