The Crosstown Classic opened at Wrigley Field with Pete Crow-Armstrong doing what he's been doing to the White Sox all season: hurting them. He led off the bottom of the first with a homer, going deep in his first at-bat since an earlier run-in with a heckling Sox fan this season, and Seiya Suzuki followed him back-to-back to make it 2-0 before the Sox even had a chance to sit down.
Then it turned into a slugfest. Randal Grichuk answered for the South Side with a homer that flipped the game, and @barstoolWSD apparently called it before it happened -- which Big Cat wasn't thrilled to admit.
I hate to admit this but @barstoolWSD said Grichuck was going yard right before this inning. Also his banana bread sucked today
The Cubs clawed the lead back in the fifth after a Miguel Vargas error let two runs score, and Wrigley never really settled down from there.
The scoreboard flips from 3-3 to 4-3 as a Cubs runner scores in the 5th inning against Castillo.
The White Sox weren't done. Andrew Benintendi came off the bench in the 8th and launched a pinch-hit, two-run shot that put Chicago's South Side ahead 5-4, sending the building into chaos and setting off Nicky Smokes' "cinema" tweet from the crowd.
Benintendi's pinch-hit two-run homer in the top of the 8th puts the White Sox ahead 5-4.
With the score tight and the beer flowing, the bleachers turned into their own undercard. A brawl broke out -- twice, according to Chief -- with police eventually walking through the section as fans scattered.
A fight breaks out among fans in the Wrigley bleachers before police move in to break it up.
Down to their last outs, the Cubs tied it in the bottom of the 9th on a Nico Hoerner RBI single that sent the game to extras with Wrigley rocking. That set the stage for the only guy who could top his own opener: Crow-Armstrong stepped up in the 10th and ended it with a two-run walk-off, his second homer of the night and his 30th of the season, capping a 7-5 win. It's the kind of night that makes him the first player in Cubs franchise history to string together back-to-back 30-homer, 30-steal seasons -- and reportedly the first player anywhere with a leadoff homer and a walk-off homer in the same game since Chris Young did it for Arizona back in 2010.
Crow-Armstrong rounds the bases with arms raised after his walk-off homer, the scoreboard reading Cubs 7, final.
Naturally, the loudest reaction to the loss belonged to White Sox Dave, who according to Big Cat and Chief sprinted out of the ballpark before the ball even landed -- "like he was Carl Lewis," as Big Cat put it -- leaving his own crew to explain his disappearance. It's the emotional cost of a Crosstown loss that flips late, and it sets up two more games at Wrigley with both clubs still chasing playoff spots down the stretch.