For one night, you could be forgiven if your failing eyes confused Pete Crow-Armstrong for the ghost of Hack Wilson stepping up to the plate at Wrigley Field. Actually, scratch that. Most nights you could be forgiven for confusing Pete Crow-Armstrong with a ghost. Frankly, I’m not quite convinced that he isn’t, especially with some of the defensive gaffes he made earlier this season, where the ball seemed to slip through his fingers as if he was fighting to remain on the plane of the living. But I digress.
Last night, PCA became the 13th player in Cubs history to complete a cycle, hitting a single, a double, a triple, and a homer in one game. But PCA only took four plate appearances to complete the achievement, and he did so in a way no other Cub has done before.
PCA’s cycle was poetic and organized. He had no strikeouts, no walks, no hit-by-pitch or pop flies. Like a disciplined and responsible student (words that are rarely used to describe PCA), he completed the hardest tasks first. Home run. Triple. Double. Single. He even threw in a sacrifice fly in his fifth and final plate appearance, as a little extra credit.
When PCA crossed off his final item—hit a single off of a 92-mph sinker—the roaring crowd of Chicago came to their feet to applaud the greatness they had witnessed. As the excited Cubs fans chanted "P-C-A!," basking in the glory of the moment, they also inadvertently gave a standing ovation to Crow-Armstrong getting picked off. Oh, well. Fun while it lasted, I suppose.
Such is the story of the Chicago Cubs season. It seems that every time the Cubs inspire a standing ovation, they give the crowd a reason to immediately sit back down. After a pretty middling start, the Cubs went on a 10-game win streak in mid-April for the first time since 2016—the fateful season where the team stomped on the memory of that poor old billy goat who had taught them how to appreciate the littler victories. A few days after it ended, they started a second 10-game win streak. But "Go Cubs Go" quickly turned to "No Cubs No." The team lost 14 of their next 16 games, including, yep, 10 in a row. They currently sit third in a tricky NL Central, closer to the bottom than the top, and they're stuck in a big traffic jam on the outskirts of the wild card.
The Cubs had promise coming into this season, displaying offensive depth that should have had no problem, say, not losing a game by 15 runs to the Giants. PCA looks much more disciplined at the plate and has broken out of his early slump to prove himself an MVP-caliber player once again. But the rest of the offense? Not so much. Alex Bregman approaches the plate much like my father when I dragged him to the pet store as a child. He's giving a sympathetic glance to the runners on base, but he's not bringing anybody home. Meanwhile, Dansby Swanson steps up to bat looking like a Little Leaguer, swinging at anything that moves in a desperate attempt to raise his minuscule .176 average. To make matters worse, the starting pitching rotation is in shambles, as Shota Imanaga is the only starter from the Opening Day roster who has managed to remain healthy. At this point, the bullpen should be converted into a hospital wing.
In between these missing pieces, the Cubs still latch onto moments of glory. But it's not easy. To be a Cubs fan right now is like being repeatedly slapped in the face, and then helped up off the ground, and then slapped in the face again by a pitcher with a bum arm. And lest I be accused of being a biased Cardinals fan hating on the Cubs, let me clarify one thing: I am not actually a Cardinals fan. I am just a hater.
