Late Tuesday had turned to early Wednesday, and if the Cleveland Indians’ collapse hadn’t been indignity enough, their manager Terry Francona had become a prisoner in his own stadium.
He left a postgame interview in a room beneath the stands, and tried to walk back to the team’s clubhouse – only to run into a mob of fans leaving Cleveland’s 9-3 Game 6 World Series loss to the Chicago Cubs. The crowd was filtered through two barriers set up in the corridor, forcing Francona and a team public relations man to stop as the fans pushed through. The opening between the barriers was controlled by a vigilant security guard, who appeared unconcerned that the home team’s manger was standing at the other end trying to get past.
Or maybe the guard did know, and she was just going to make Francona squirm, the way all of Cleveland is squirming the end of a World Series they could have won days ago.
“Wait!” the guard shouted, as a woman pushed by with a baby stroller followed by five people in Indians T-shirts.
“Can I get through now?” Francona asked politely, but with exasperation building in his voice.
“No! Wait,” the guard said, waving more fans past.
Then she held up a small scanner to read the badges of all authorized baseball personnel for access to the clubhouse area.
“I need to scan you in,” she said.
Francona looked down. He didn’t have an access badge. He was the Indians manager in the Indians stadium, wearing his Indians uniform. What other proof did he need that he should be able to get into the Indians clubhouse?
“Um, he’s OK to get through,” the PR man said, waving his own badge.
The guard nodded skeptically, and Francona could at last continue his walk toward a Game 7 for the ages. He glanced at the PR man and then he chuckled, shaking his head as if to say: what more can go wrong?
But there was no other way for this World Series to end. Decades of suffering would not cease in five games as Cleveland was poised to do on Sunday night with a three-games-to-one lead. The narrative of the Indians’ longtime lament could not be completed with an easy stroll through the final series. Nor would it be right for the Cubs, more than a century removed from their last world championship, to go away without a scramble to the end. Francona, the PR man, Cleveland, Chicago and all of baseball were going to have to wait for Wednesday night and the game that would stop one franchise’s agony and prolong the other’s.
By now, the storyline has been laid out that most fans can repeat it in their sleep: the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, the Indians in 1948. The previous occasion on which each team went back – Chicago in 1945 and Cleveland in 1997 – both lost in seven games. If only one of these teams had made this series, their fans’ despair would be the dominant theme. But in a conclusion that could only be imagined in Hollywood, they are to play each other in one final game.
So many twists at this point. Cleveland has collapsed as only Cleveland can, but they will start their best pitcher, Corey Kluber. Chicago used their two best starters, Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta, to get to Game 7, and they go on Wednesday night with Kyle Hendricks, who only lasted four innings in the Cubs’ Game 3 loss. Chicago has started to hit after a slow start in the series; Cleveland’s resourceful lineup has gone cold. You can feel the anxiety switching from the Cubs to the Indians, who made several silly mistakes in their Game 6 defeat. But Game 7s are strange things they take a life of their own.
You could feel the difference between the two teams after Tuesday’s Game 6. The Indians’ clubhouse was silent. Players dressed quietly and quickly moved toward the door, despite the throngs of journalists that lingered around them. Their center fielder, Tyler Naquin, was forced to stand on a box in the middle of the room and answer questions to a large group of reporters about why he and right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall let a fly ball drop between them for a two-run mistake that doomed them in the first inning. He looked miserable.
Down the hall, the Cubs laughed with relief in their joyous clubhouse. Right fielder Jason Heyward talked about “earning momentum” in a series. Catcher Cody Ross, who will retire after this series, said: “We have to put the pressure on them.” And in the far corner, Aroldis Chapman, the team’s dominant closer, who has pitched far more innings than he has normally been accustomed to, stood stoically at his locker as people wondered if he had any strength left in his arm to heave 101mph fastballs.
“I think that we will be fine, because it is the last game,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.
Only the biggest in either team’s history.
- This article was amended on 2 November 2016 to correct a sentence that said the Cubs and Indians had only been back to the World Series once since they last won it, and both lost in seven games. We meant to say that the last time each team went to the World Series – Chicago in 1945 and Cleveland in 1997 – they lost in seven games. This has now been changed.
