The Cubs killed the Giants' even-year magic with a criminal 9th inning

SAN FRANCISCO – Even-Year Magic, the inexplicable sorcery that propelled the San Francisco Giants to three World Series titles, fueled a baseball renaissance in the Bay Area and left fans around the country marveling at one team’s ability to win but only every other season, died Tuesday night. It was 6.

San Francisco police issued a warrant for the arrest of the Chicago Cubs, who are accused of manslaughter, dismemberment (of a bullpen or relief pitching staff), hit and run, disturbing the peace and identity theft. The Cubs are believed to have fled on a plane headed back to Chicago and hope to delay extradition until after the World Series.

The scene of the alleged crime was AT&T Park, the time 8:31 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, when a rookie named Derek Law came on to protect a three-run lead in Game 4 of the National League Division Series. Approximately 23 minutes later, the Cubs had systematically torn asunder Law and four other pitchers from manager Bruce Bochy’s feckless bullpen with a series of hard and soft hits, four runs and a wild celebration that resembled so many perpetrated by San Francisco in 2010, 2012 and 2014. The Giants’ 2016 season passed away at the hand of 13 consecutive Aroldis Chapman fastballs and three swinging strikeouts. The time of death was 9:05 p.m. The score was Cubs 6, Giants 5.

Those 34 minutes encapsulated a Giants season in which the bullpen, long a strength, devolved into a gasoline-spewing liability of blown leads, blown saves and, ultimately, a blown season. The Cubs are expected to plead self-defense to the charges.

Their ninth-inning comeback, which spared them a pressure-filled, do-or-die Game 5 at home, started with a Kris Bryant single placed perfectly between a shifted shortstop and second baseman, continued with an Anthony Rizzo walk, grew in probability with a run-scoring Ben Zobrist double, mushroomed with a Willson Contreras pinch-hit two-run single, flourished with an error that allowed Jason Heyward to advance to second base after a bunt and apexed with a Javier Baez single that plated the go-ahead run. All that was missing was a chalk outline of Law, Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo, Will Smith and Hunter Strickland, the collective book of matches that self-immolated on the mound.

It was there that the Cubs celebrated what some of the 43,166 in attendance were calling a triumph and others felonious behavior, wearing celebratory T-shirts and chanting: “We don’t quit! We don’t quit!”

The winner of the Washington Nationals-Los Angeles Dodgers division series fears such recidivism.

During the regular season, the Cubs regularly committed such acts without penalty, filching 103 victories from their opponents, many of whom copped to being overwhelmed at Chicago’s penchant for unrelenting dominance. The Cubs stole Game 1 with 1-0 victory and rode a home run from relief pitcher Travis Wood to a Game 2 win. Monday night’s 13-inning coup by the Giants, however, marked their 10th consecutive in postseason elimination games and set them up for another in Game 4.

Eight brilliant innings from starter Matt Moore, who limited the Cubs to two hits and left having thrown 120 pitches, set up the Giants for a ninth inning with a three-run advantage and wiggle room should their bullpen of arsonists once again wield their Zippos on a lead. One by one, they marched out of the bullpen, chests puffed, prepared to handcuff the Cubs. One by one, they marched off the mound, defeated.

“All our guys are setup guys,” Bochy said, “everybody there.”

This is vital to the Cubs’ case, according to sources close to the defense. The Giants’ lack of a lockdown relief pitcher – a weakness not addressed at the trade deadline, when Chapman, Mark Melancon and Andrew Miller were dealt – left them naked come the ninth, and the Cubs believe they were simply doing their jobs, with no intentionally aberrant behavior.

“I would like to think you’re going to get three outs there,” Bochy said. “We couldn’t do it.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable thought. The Cubs’ lineup limped into the ninth inning 2 for 25 on the night and 5 for their previous 57. This was not a group of criminals. It was an indigent, beaten bunch. Still, the Cubs refused to cow. When Heyward walked down the tunnel from the batting cage during the ninth inning, he ran into Jon Lester, the Cubs’ ace.

“Why not?” Lester said.

“Yeah,” Heyward replied. “Why not?”

Before the division series, Maddon addressed the Cubs with not so much a motivational speech as a warning: “Something bad’s gonna happen.” He’s not some sort of a doomsday preacher but a pragmatist. Maddon has seen the good and the bad of postseason baseball. He was the bench coach for the Los Angeles Angels when the Giants lost a postseason closeout matchup, Game 7 of the 2002 World Series. He was the manager of a Tampa Bay Rays team on the wrong end of the 2008 World Series. The winners, the losers – they all face trials and travails, and Maddon’s message was simple: Don’t allow those bad moments to derail the season.

Bryant could’ve hit right into the shift. He didn’t. Rizzo, 0 for 13 in the series entering the game, could’ve caved against the funk of the left-handed Lopez. He worked a full-count walk. Zobrist, brought in during the winter as a free agent for a moment exactly like this, could’ve buried the Cubs with a double-play ball. He instead yanked an 85-mph Romo fastball into the right-field corner.

“He just left one up that I could get the barrel on,” Zobrist said. “I definitely wasn’t trying to pull it.”

It was an impressive piece of hitting and an even more impressive piece of jurisprudence: denial of intent. This was the Cubs’ tack inside their ribald postgame party that included teammates targeting Lester’s camouflage-colored Crocs with beer poured in the holes on top and the non-stop drenching of president Theo Epstein, whose midgame glower in the stands was meme-worthy until the Cubs went on their spree. They didn’t mean to so thoroughly dissect the Giants. They just sorta did.

Maddon went into the ninth with a plan for every Bochy maneuver, a countermeasure conceived days earlier. Chicago stacked its roster with an extra position player for this very moment, knowing Bochy’s trust in each of his relief pitchers would prompt such bullpen chicanery. With Romo on the mound, he sent in pinch hitter Chris Coghlan, knowing Bochy would counter with Will Smith, which is exactly what Maddon wanted, because he loved the idea of matching him up with another pinch hitter, Contreras. The rookie is one of the last holdovers of the Cubs’ previous regime, and when Epstein arrived in 2012, Contreras was a wild mess of talent. He learned to calm himself for this very moment, as did Baez, another of former GM Jim Hendry’s gifts to Epstein.

“I love playing under pressure,” Baez said. “I think I can slow the game pretty good.”

Baez was the star of the series, a defensive warlock whose all-around game contributed as much to the Giants’ demise as any. He turned a 100-mph Strickland fastball into a 72-mph low line drive. As in any case, it’s not always the ferocity of the blow so much as the placement. This went straight into the Giants’ heart.

Out they went, not in a blaze of glory, but a conflagration as much of their own doing as the Cubs’. This wasn’t how it had to end. It was just how it did.

And as the Cubs showered themselves in bubbling beverages and yelled themselves hoarse, they showed no remorse. It wasn’t sociopathy so much as single-mindedness, which hews to the culture of the sporting landscape in which they operate. It’s never about them; it’s always about you. It’s not even years and 10 straight wins; it’s 108 years and eight more wins to vanquish it. It’s not a crime; it’s a win, a glorious win, for which they’ll apologize no time soon.