Sept. 19--The Cubs and Cardinals go at it again this afternoon at Wrigley Field with a different buzz in the park after Friday's brouhaha.
Whether there will be a carryover effect from Joe Maddon comments on Anthony Rizzo being hit by a "vigilante" pitcher remains to be seen.
"I certainly hope not," Maddon said. "As far as I'm concerned, that's over with. Today is Saturday. Keeping with the mantra I want us to play well on Saturday... it is Saturday? And so it's all about today. I said all I wanted to say (Friday).
"As far as I'm concerned, it's over. It's time to move on. Just play some good solid, baseball. We've been doing that for a bit. I just want out guys to keep doing what they have to do and to do nothing differently. I'm just looking forward to Saturday's game."
Rizzo said he was certain that Cardinals pitcher Matt Belisle threw at him on purpose.
"We've played these guys a lot this year and obviously at that moment I want to kill someone because I know it's intentional," Rizzo said. "We didn't hit (Matt) Holliday on purpose there. Thankfully he's all right. I hope he's all right.
"But at the moment you want to go out and strangle someone, but it's not necessary right now, especially with the position we're in. We have a good opportunity today to put a lot of pressure on Pittsburgh tonight, so we've got to take care of business today."
The Cubs woke up one game behind the Pirates for the first wild-card spot, which would give them homefield advantage in the Oct. 7th game.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said he wasn't too worried about Maddon's comments.
"You never know what's going to happen," he said. "I get the fact that they're trying to keep law and order, trying to keep people from getting hurt. I get all that. That's something that is out of our hands. Once again, if you find any consistency in these answers is that there are things we can control and things that we don't. We focus on the things that we can control which is preparing to play a game and win."
Rizzo said he hoped it was over, but wasn't sure.
"I have no idea," Rizzo said. "We're just going to keep playing good baseball. It's really not that big of a deal. They felt the need to throw at me. Whatever. So be it. I've gotten hit 28 other times other than that one. It is what it is.
"Sometimes teams overreact when people get hit. You guys have seen me get hit 29 times this year. We have not thrown at one person. There was another incident this year where we feel like they intentionally threw at me as well. We didn't do anything about it. Just certain teams take care of things different ways. I don't want to see anyone get hurt."
