Wrigley Field turned into a launching pad on Monday night as the Cubs and Tigers traded haymakers deep into the game. The ballpark was doing its playoff-in-July routine early, with balls flying into the bleachers and the crowd getting louder with every crack of the bat.
Home runs were already landing in the Wrigley bleachers well before the late-inning fireworks started.
Detroit built a cushion and looked like it was going to cruise, but the Cubs weren't done. Down 5-3 in the bottom of the 8th, Chicago got exactly what it needed from two of its biggest names. Ian Happ and Alex Bregman both went deep in the frame, flipping a two-run hole into a 5-5 tie in a matter of minutes and sending the Wrigley crowd into a frenzy.
Happ and Bregman both connected in the 8th to tie the game at 5-5.
That kind of two-homer answer in a single inning is the stuff Wrigley crowds remember, and for a few minutes it felt like the Cubs had flipped the whole night on its head. Bregman, brought in as one of the biggest offseason additions on the North Side, delivering in a spot like that is exactly the kind of moment his contract was supposed to buy.
The exasperation around Bregman's night got the meme treatment online.
The tie didn't hold. According to MLB.com, Detroit answered in extra innings, plating the go-ahead runs in the top of the 10th before closing it out for an 8-6 win, meaning the Cubs' furious comeback ultimately bought them only a temporary reprieve rather than a win.
For Chicago, the sting wasn't just the final score, it was the missed chance to actually finish it. The Cubs had a runner on second with nobody out in the bottom of the 9th and couldn't push the winning run across, a gut-punch that outlasted the high of the Happ and Bregman homers.
Steven Cheah summed up the deflating finish after the Cubs failed to cash in a golden ninth-inning chance.
Gut wrenching Cubs L. Tie game 0 outs runner on 2nd in the bottom of the 9th. Couldn’t pull it out. Pain,
Nights like this are the ones that stick with a fan base mid-summer. The power display from Happ and Bregman was real, and it's the kind of thing that keeps Wrigley believing this lineup can punch with anyone. But blowing a prime chance to win it in the 9th, then losing in extras, is the part that'll linger until the next series against Detroit.