Seventeen years later, miracle Marlins rally to beat Cubs in Game 1 of wild card | Opinion
Seventeen years to get back here felt worth the wait for the Miami Marlins on Wednesday afternoon.
Except for the fake, piped-in noise Wrigley Field in Chicago was empty and pandemic quiet. Not in the top of the seventh inning, though. What you heard then, all you heard, was joy erupting from the Marlins’ dugout as Corey Dickerson’s shot to left-center field carried 384 feet, over the Cubs, over the ivy wall.
And again a couple of minutes later when Jesus Aguilar’s 366-foot drive to right would leave the field, too.
Dickerson’s three-run home run and Aguilar’s homer with one man on accounted for all of Miami’s runs in a 5-1 comeback win in Game 1 of this NL Wild Card best-of-3 series.
Pitcher Sandy Alcantara? He turned a start into a polished gem, working into the seventh inning and touched only for Ian Happ’s solo home run. Three relievers closed it out efficiently.
Strong starting pitching and clutch hitting — it has been the Fish formula all year.
The only sour note for Miami: Center fielder Starling Marte, maybe the Marlins’ best hitter, was hit in the left hand by a pitch in the ninth inning, calling into question his availability the rest of this week.
Miami didn’t even need any help from Steve Bartman this time.
Now the underdog Marlins — the first team to make the playoffs after losing 105 games the year before — are one win from ousting the Cubbies and moving on. It could happen in Game 2 on Thursday, with the rubber game (if needed) on Friday.
The strangest of years and strangest of seasons in MLB history has seen Miami in the postseason for the first time since 2003.
That was when Cubs fan Steve Bartman stepped into infamy by interfering with a foul ball, an incident that sparked the Marlins’ rally to beat Chicago and win the NL Championship Series en route to winning the World Series.
Fish championships in 1997 and ‘03 have been it. Not a single other playoff appearance in 27 seasons, until now.
How long is 17 years?
Any parent watching his newborn graduate high school might tell you 17 years flashes past in a blink, but, in baseball it can seem an eternity. A lifetime.
When the Marlins last did this in ‘03, Wednesday’s winning pitcher, Alcantara, was 8 years old and just beginning to grasp a baseball in San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic.
Thursday’s Game 2 starter, Sixto Sanchez, was growing up to the west of there on the same island. He was 5.
Derek Jeter, now the Marlins’ CEO and part owner? In ‘03 he was in his absolute prime with the Yankees, in the heart of a Hall of Fame-headed career.
Twenty-eight of 29 other MLB teams had made the postseason since the Marlins last had before 2020 so improbably ended the drought. Only the Seattle Mariners have waited longer.
This postseason rewards Miami’s first winning season since 2009, 31-29 in the truncated 60-game season.
There was a full-circle quality to Alcantara taking the mound for NLWC Game 1.
He had been the team’s Opening Day starter on July 24 — then was among the 18 Marlins who tested positive for COVID-19, derailing the season just as it began, causing eight games in a row to be postponed because of the severely depleted roster.
Alcantara’s comeback from the coronavirus mirrored the team’s.
No sports franchise in America was hit harder by the pandemic or rallied more impressively to overcome it.
No MLB team had longer odds to win the World Series in February, or again among the 16 teams in these expanded playoffs.
Circumstances forced manager Don Mattingly to juggle 61 different players across a 60-game schedule. To put that in perspective in terms of roster tumult, the record for most players used in a full 162-game season is 67.
I’ll never forget that night 17 years ago when the underdog Marlins won their 2003 championship. I didn’t think it possible for Yankee Stadium to be so quiet. The place was full, but only a relative few hundred Marlins fans who’d made the trip pierced the silence with their cheering.
It was similar at a pandemic-empty Wrigley on Wednesday. But then came that seventh inning, when those two home runs flew, and the only sound in the place was the cheering from the visitor’s dugout.
From the disrespected team that wasn’t supposed to be here, but is proving it belongs.
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 5:32 PM.
