As the seventh game of the World Series continued deep into the night last week, three things happened that were unusual, three things that make baseball the remarkable game it is. They had to do with rain, a meeting, and a player—three reasons the Cubs won the game, and thus the series.
The Cubs and the Indians, you’ll recall, were still tied at 6 runs apiece as the teams finished the ninth inning. But then rain fell from the sky, and the grounds crew rolled out the tarp. It was 11:54 p.m. as the players headed to their clubhouses.
Soon the teams learned that play would resume around 12:15 a.m. Do the math: that’s a 17-minute rain delay. Have you ever seen such a short one? This one was just long enough to permit the Cubs to have a little meeting.
“The rain stopped the game for us,” the Cubs outfielder Jason Heyward later told the Washington Post‘s Barry Svriuga, “and we just needed a brief moment to kind of collect ourselves and be reminded of who we are.” The Cubs had given up their three-run lead in that fast-paced bottom of the eighth. The game continued at a fast pace and had to be stopped if the Cubs were going to be able to collect themselves as a team and play the game as they do, which is to say, very well. How often does a rain delay facilitate a team meeting that leads to a win, much less a Game 7 win?
And the player leading the meeting: that man Heyward. He told USA Today, “I just wanted them to remember how they were, how good we are. Know how proud of them I was and that I loved them. That I mean it from the bottom of my heart.” It was the speech of his life, from a man who is one of the most outstanding defensive players in the game but who has never performed offensively as expected, with just 7 home runs, 49 runs batted in, and a .230 average in this, his seventh year in the majors.
Heyward the professional will aim to do better next year. But the player in that meeting had a pretty good one in 2016.
