CHICAGO _ Of all the wild, wonky, and of course windy games the Cardinals have played in more than a century of visiting the Cubs at the corner of Clark and Addison streets, Monday's doubleheader was a doozy, unlike any the old bones of the Friendly Confines had seen.
There was the greatest game yet by a Cardinals designated hitter in a National League contest, and he did so for a St. Louis team playing a home game at Wrigley Field. But the Cardinals wore road grays, not their classic whites. Professional courtesy. When the visiting team rallied to win the evening game, the crowd roared _ or so the noise pumped into the empty ballpark tried to recreate. Dexter Fowler hit a homer in Game 1 and went into the bleachers to retrieve Max Schrock's first career home run ball in Game 2. There were debuts, blunders, and a modern twist for Ernie Banks' sunny exclamation: "Let's play two! But only seven innings."
At the nexus of it all was new Cardinal and eight-year veteran Brad Miller. He hit two homers in Game 2 and had the game-winning two-run double in Game 1.
All in his first visit to Wrigley Field.
It's not always like this, Brad.
"A lot of new things we're seeing," manager Mike Shildt said. "Weird to be in a home setting with gray uniforms. Just a lot of firsts. A lot of firsts."
Despite all the newness forced upon the doubleheader by baseball trying to wind its way through a season in a pandemic and the zaniness invited by a game at Wrigley, Monday's doubleheader ended in a predictable fashion: a split. Miller's two-run double in the top of the seventh in Game 1 snapped a tie and sent the Cardinals to a 3-1 victory. Miller's two homers, at DH, in Game 2 provided an early lead that the Cubs vanquished with David Bote's pinch-hit, three-run homer for a 5-4 victory.
The first game was the Cardinals' fifth consecutive victory at Wrigley _ which is good enough to call it home, evidently. To make up a game postponed due to their COVID-19 outbreak earlier this month, the Cardinals were the home team in Game 2 and will be again Wednesday evening.
The Cubs improved to 1-0 as the visiting team at Wrigley in the past 100 years.
Or so.
As much unusualness as the Cardinals' schedule causes, there is a reality about it they cannot escape. Like peanut butter to the crust, the Cardinals are trying to spread as much pitching as possible to cover all the innings during an eight-game, five-day visit to Chicago. At times, it will be thin. In Game 2, the cascade effect caught up with the Cardinals. Alex Reyes started Game 2, but three walks and a run scored on a passed ball bloated his pitch count. Instead of two innings from Reyes, the Cardinals got one. Ricardo Sanchez, one of nine Cardinals to make their major-league debut in the past three days, pitched a steady two innings _ but instead of getting the Cardinals through half of the seven-inning game, they still had four innings to go.
In the sixth, Tyler Webb entered with a runner on base, and the first of the two innings he had to handle came undone. A walk to Jason Heyward made the Cubs move for them _ to righthanded-hitter Bote to face the lefty Webb. Bote tagged a pitch 434 feet to turn a 4-2 Cardinals' lead into a 5-4 Cubs win.
"It's about efficiency," Shildt said. "Always with pitch count, it's efficiency. Working ahead, controlling counts _ that allows you to not work as hard, quicker outs, go deeper into the game. The story of the game was really clear. We didn't control counts. Every time we didn't that, it hurt us."
A fixture as a starter in the KBO and its pitcher of the year in 2018, Kwang Hyun Kim admitted to having some jitters early in Game 1, his first start in the majors and his first appearance in a game since July 24, when he closed opening night.
He wore that nervousness on his head.
Kim pitched the first inning with the wrong hat on. He wore the Cardinals' batting practice hat with the outlined "STL" logo, not the classic white. Between innings, a member of the team's training staff walked up and set his game hat beside him.
"Didn't say anything," Kim said. "Then I realized my mistake."
The lefty got six outs from the next seven batters he faced with the uniform hat on, and that helped him press deeper into the game. Like Dakota Hudson before him, Kim had a pitch count of around 60 pitches, and the Cardinals offered no elasticity when it came removing him. He had thrown 57 pitches with two outs and the No. 8 hitter coming up in the fourth inning _ and in came a reliever. The bulk of Kim's pitch count was needed in the first inning as he sidestepped a bases-loaded mousetrap.
With one out, Kim walked Anthony Rizzo and allowed a double to Javier Baez. The Cardinals intentionally walked Willson Contreras to challenge Ian Happ.
Kim struck out Happ on three pitches.
A groundout and he was out of the inning, the game still scoreless. He managed his pitch count from there and allowed only the solo homer before exiting.
"As a starter, I think the role is to throw as many things, to become an innings-eater," Kim said, returning to that description "innings-eater" twice in a postgame interview. "Even the bases were loaded that was my thought process. I tried to really comfortable, even though it was not easy."
The Cubs and Cardinals traded solo homers _ Fowler's was first for a 1-0 lead against the Cubs starter with a hex on the Cardinals, Kyle Hendricks. In the seventh, the Cubs had a lefty and a righty warming in the bullpen for Miller's spot in the order. The Cardinals had John Nogowksi ready, a batting helmet on, to face the lefty, Kyle Ryan, but the Cubs went to the righty, former Cardinals farmhand Rowan Wick. That kept Miller in the game.
"I just wasn't going to look into the dugout," Miller said. "With the masks on it's hard to hear. I was just going to play dumb if they brought in Ryan. Obviously, bases loaded is a great time to hit."
He lashed a double to the wall in left-center field to break the tie and give the Cardinals' the Game 1 victory.
Miller homered in his first two at-bats of Game 2 to join Leo Durocher as a Cardinal with multiple RBIs in each of his first two games against the Cubs. Miller was playing in his 762nd and 763rd games, and yet none of them had come at Wrigley. He had played in two ballparks in Atlanta and one that shares his same name, but Wrigley was the last of the NL ballparks for him to visit. In a week filled with firsts for rookies galore, why not one for the veteran?
"We're thrust into a unique situation, and we love the preparation, the at-bats, and now we can't do it," Miller said. "Nobody cares. When you get in that box, you've got to figure it out. We're throwing it back a little bit."
