There are bad nights and then there are nights where you let a ball roll to the wall, watch a runner circle the bases for an inside-the-park homer, and basically gift-wrap a 6-1 lead to the Oakland Athletics. That was Pete Crow-Armstrong's first act on Wednesday. The A's were swaggering, Shota Imanaga was getting tagged, and the Friendly Confines felt anything but.
Oakland piling on Imanaga, scoreboard ticking from 4-1 to 5-1 with bat flips to spare.
Then the Cubs decided they weren't going quietly. Ian Happ kept them breathing with a hit that injected the first real life into the building, and from there it became one of those Wrigley nights where the wind, the crowd, and the at-bats all start tilting the same way. Dansby Swanson got into the mix. The dugout started bouncing. Down 6-1 became a one-score game faster than the A's bullpen could blink.
Happ's at-bat that flipped the energy and put the comeback into motion.
Which brings us back to PCA. The same guy who turned a routine fly into a track meet got another crack at it in the bottom of the 9th, and he ripped the game-winning hit to cap a 7-6 walk-off. Redemption arc, complete. As Big Cat put it, the haters were already lining up the inside-the-park clip — but they don't get to clip just that one anymore.
PCA's walk-off hit and the mob at the plate, 7-6 final over the A's.
This is baseball at its most unhinged — one player being the goat and the GOAT inside the same nine innings, with a 6-1 deficit erased in between. The Cubs still have a ton of flaws and one walk-off doesn't fix the roster, but for one night at Wrigley they got the full roller coaster and somehow came out the other side with a W flag flying.
The full comeback framing: down 6-1, PCA caps it, Cubs walk it off 7-6.