Paul Sullivan: 20 years after A.J. Pierzynski became a City Series villain, Pete Crow-Armstrong steps into the void
· Yahoo Sports
CHICAGO — Pete Crow-Armstrong’s walk-off home run in the opener of the City Series was still the talk of the town heading into Game 2 Tuesday night at Wrigley Field.
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Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable’s decision to pitch to Crow-Armstrong in the 10th inning was debated ad nauseam on talk radio and the internet, and Venable reiterated Tuesday that he was at peace with the move.
“PCA’s a really special player, and yeah, he’s scary, but so is (Seiya) Suzuki, you know what I mean?” he said.
Meanwhile, Cubs fans and the media debated whether the epic night sealed the National League Most Valuable Player award for PCA in his duel with Los Angeles Dodgers unicorn Shohei Ohtani.
“That’s for you guys,” Crow-Armstrong said. “When you play a game like we did tonight, that’s all the fun I need in my life ever.”
It was only one moment in one game in a 162-game season. Players and managers always say no game is more important than any other.
But in a city that takes baseball seriously, with two teams competing for postseason spots and fans looking for bragging rights, it was much, much bigger than one game. Add in the backstory from the first round of the City Series, when Crow-Armstrong had an incident with a taunting White Sox fan that went viral, and it just adds another layer to the long-running drama between the North Side and South Side baseball teams.
“What’s made this year better playing (the Sox) is they’re a good team,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said before Tuesday’s game. “That’s what made last night fun. And it makes a difference, and you feel that difference year over year.
“And when you get in a stadium and there’s an equal number of fans from both teams, which doesn’t happen often and is rare in sports, that’s why these games are so much fun … And it makes people passionate about them, and the players put on a great show for everybody.”
As a full-fledged villain to Sox fans in only his third full season, Crow-Armstrong’s dominant show will long be remembered in City Series history, even as he couldn’t remember much of it afterward.
“I usually black out during those types of things,” he said of his home run. “I did get a good bat flip in, I know that.”
It was reminiscent of a July afternoon in 2006, when A.J. Pierzynski’s two-out, three-run home run off Cubs closer Ryan Dempster in the top of the ninth vaulted the Sox to a shocking 8-6 win at Wrigley. Pierzynski had been booed in every at-bat all weekend because of his fight with Michael Barrett in the first round of the City Series at the Cell, becoming public enemy No. 1 on the North Side.
Unlike Crow-Armstrong, Pierzynski outwardly relished being a villain to Cubs fans, and coming through against them in a clutch situation made the moment even sweeter.
“For all the stuff I’ve been through this weekend and everything that’s going on, it’s a nice thing,” he said afterward, before asking a rhetorical question:
“Am I going to be Bartman from now on? … But that’s the way it is. Fans have to have a hero and an enemy, and I guess I’m the enemy.”
There’ve been plenty of other memorable home runs since the two teams began facing off annually in 1997, including Mike Caruso’s home run off Cubs closer Rick Aguilera after a 3 1/2 hour rain delay that capped a Sox sweep at Wrigley in 1999. Caruso had only two home runs in 529 at-bats that season, but he’ll always be remembered for the one against the Cubs.
Only two years ago, Christopher Morel hit a three-run, walk-off home run against closer Gregory Santos at Wrigley, igniting an epic celebration that seemed like the start of a long career in Chicago for the young Cubs infielder.
“It’s my time,” he said afterward.
Long story short — it wasn’t. Like Caruso, Morel would soon be gone, though his home run would always be a part of Cubs-Sox history.
The Sox tried to make Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa into a villain in 2001 when shortstop José Valentín homered at Wrigley and imitated Sosa’s air kiss-heart tap celebration to the cameras when he got to the dugout.
“Guys want to do that, let ’em showboat,” Cubs manager Don Baylor said that day. “If they get drilled eventually, that’s part of (the game).” But everyone liked Sammy back then, even most Sox fans.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, there are no current players on the Sox who can be considered a true villain. It’s a likeable team that plays hard, and even diehard Cubs fans would be hard-pressed to pick out someone to boo. Cubs fans reserved their real animosity for Sox fans, and naturally blamed them for the huge brawl in the right-center bleachers Monday night that quickly went viral.
Cubs spokesperson Jennifer Martínez told the Chicago Tribune that fan safety is a “top priority,” though the videos of the brawl suggested security was somewhat lacking on Monday.
The scene was hard to ignore, no matter whose side you were on.
Crow-Armstrong said Monday it was “nauseating,” but joked that the Cubs and Sox fans were “competing” too. Counsell on Tuesday said his “vision is a little shaky, but it looked serious, I will say that. And then it’s over and you move on.”
Cubs pitcher David Peterson was coming out of the bullpen to pitch in the eighth inning after the fight took place, and the umpires were chuckling.
“They’re standing there laughing and I’m wondering, ‘What’s so funny?'” he told me Tuesday. “They’re like, ‘Did you see the fight?’ I’m like, ‘I’m jogging in here to go do my job, man.’ Obviously you don’t want to see (people get hurt) but it’s cool to see two fan bases sharing the city and having the passion they have.”
When I asked Cubs shortstop Nico Hoerner if he saw it, he conceded it was a “chaotic” scene, but nothing out of the norm for the City Series.
“Hope it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “But it does happen a lot in these games over the years.”
The players change over the years, but some things manage to stay the same.
It’s just a Chicago thing.
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