California cool from Maddon set the tone

Everything about the situation facing the Cubs before their 10-2 victory Wednesday at Dodger Stadium suggested panic.

Everything about Manager Joe Maddon contradicted that notion.

So the Cubs relaxed in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, following the lead of their California-cool manager, who treated the most harrowing 24 hours of his team’s season like any ordinary weekday. Maddon stayed positive, choosing to view shutout losses in Games 2 and 3 as an aberration rather than a precursor to elimination.

“I can’t get over the top and take a trip to negative town now, just because we’ve had two bad days,” Maddon said before the Cubs exploded for 10 runs.

“I have a lot of faith and trust in our players,” Maddon stressed.

On cue, the Cubs justified it. They rediscovered their hitting stroke, regained their swagger and evened the series 2-2.

If this indeed was the Cubs’ moment of truth, they gave everyone reason to believe again. A team that experienced so little adversity since April overcame an October obstacle in convincing fashion.

The Cubs responded to the do-or-die moment Game 4 represented by doing something they hadn’t done since the first game of the series. They scored a run. And then another. And then two more followed on a stress-reducing, exhale-inducing tworun home run by Addison Russell, who was overdue.

“I felt pretty confident at the plate and was seeing the ball well,” Russell said. “There was never any pressing. A little frustration, but never panic.”

Before the game, Russell got loose throwing a football as far as he could, and then he helped change the series by going deep with a 392foot shot to right-center field. Next thing you knew, good hitting spread throughout the Cubs order like a bad rumor.

“When you start hitting, it’s contagious,” Maddon said.

It started with a bunt, baseball’s time-tested slump-buster, when Ben Zobrist led off the fourth with a 25-foot roller that was his idea. If the Cubs win the NLCS, and eventually the World Series, Zobrist’s bunt may become as legendary in Chicago as Dave Roberts’ stolen base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS remains in Boston.

“Such a big deal,” Miguel Montero said.

For a Cubs team squeezing the bat too tightly, seeing Zobrist reach base to start an inning loosened everybody up. Javy Baez and Willson Contreras singled, scoring Zobrist. After a Jason Heyward groundout scored Baez, Russell stepped up, having gone one for 25 in the playoffs. With a swing of the bat, everything changed — just as Maddon promised.

It helped the Cubs reset the series and resume thinking big.

As a show of confidence, Maddon went back to his regular lineup, including the light-hitting Heyward. To Maddon, Heyward’s defensive presence in a must-win game outweighed his offensive liabilities.

“I like looking out on the field and seeing him out there,” Maddon said.

In the second, Heyward got a chance to show why, throwing out lead-footed Adrian Gonzalez trying to score from second. Gonzalez appeared to slide his left hand under Contreras’ tag, but umpires upheld the call after the Dodgers challenged.

The Cubs got a break. When the crowd of 54,449 saw the signal after the replay review, boos rang out.

But the Cubs’ suddenly hot bats made the night’s controversial play moot.

The Cubs’ only crisis came when Maddon approached the mound in the fifth to pull starter John Lackey, whose irritated expression revealed his feelings for anybody unable to read lips.

Curiosity over Clayton Kershaw’s availability overshadowed concern over Lackey’s feelings.

A reporter asked Roberts, the Dodgers manager, if any scenario existed in which he would start Kershaw in Game 5. “No,” Roberts said. That was before the Dodgers lost 10-2, so trust Roberts at your own risk.

But feel free to believe in the Cubs again.