LOS ANGELES _ Everything about the situation facing the Cubs before their 10-2 victory Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium suggested panic.
Everything about manager Joe Maddon pregame contradicted that notion.
So the Cubs relaxed in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, following the lead of their California-cool manager who treated the most harrowing 24 hours of his team's season like any ordinary weekday. Maddon stayed positive and refused to get caught up in the cataclysmic talk that spread from Chicago to SoCal, choosing to view shutout losses in Games 2 and 3 as an aberration rather than a precursor to elimination.
"I can't get over the top and take a trip to negative town now just because we've had two bad days," Maddon said two hours before the Cubs exploded for 10 runs.
Instead, Maddon shared how he called his mom, Beanie, back in his hometown of Hazleton, Pa., and checked in on an old friend at the Lehigh Valley Hospital. He reminisced about buddies back home in the B Street Band and his alma mater, Lafayette College. He sounded nothing like a manager worried about his team that entered Game 4 on an 18-inning scoreless streak.
"I have a lot of faith and trust in our players," Maddon stressed.
On cue, the Cubs justified it. They rediscovered their hitting stroke, regained their swagger and evened the series at 2-2.
If this indeed was the Cubs' moment of truth, they gave everyone reason to believe again in the best team in baseball. A team that experienced so little adversity since April overcame an October obstacle in convincing fashion.
The Cubs responded to the do-or-die moment Game 4 represented by doing something they hadn't done since the first game of the series. They scored a run. And then another. And then two more followed on a stress-reducing, exhale-inducing two-run home run by Addison Russell, who was overdue.
Before the game, Russell got loose throwing a football as far as he could, and then he helped change the series by going deep with a 392-foot shot to right-center field. Next thing you knew, good hitting spread throughout the Cubs order like a bad rumor.
It all started with a bunt, baseball's time-tested slump-buster, when Ben Zobrist led off the fourth with a 25-foot roller just inside the third-base line. If the Cubs win the NLCS, and eventually the World Series, Zobrist's bunt could become as legendary in Chicago as Dave Roberts' stolen base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS remains in Boston.
For a Cubs team squeezing the bat too tightly, seeing Zobrist reach base to start an inning loosened everybody up. Javy Baez and Willson Contreras singled, scoring Zobrist. After a Jason Heyward groundout scored Baez, Russell stepped up having gone 1-for-25 in the playoffs. With a swing of the bat, everything changed _ just as Maddon promised.
He pulled Russell aside during Monday's workout to provide some positive reinforcement despite a slump that goes back to Sept. 1.
"He's 22 and experiencing postseason for the first time because he was hurt last year," Maddon said. "I was actually trying to get him to do what he had been doing and refreshing his mind."
It helped the Cubs reset the series and resume thinking big.
As a show of confidence, Maddon went back to his regular lineup, including right fielder Heyward, who entered 2-for-19 in the playoffs. To Maddon, Heyward's defensive presence in a must-win game outweighed his offensive liabilities.
"I like looking out on the field and seeing him out there," Maddon said.
In the second, Heyward got a chance to show why. After Andrew Toles singled to right, Heyward threw out lead-footed Adrian Gonzalez trying to score from second. Gonzalez appeared to slide his left hand under the tag of catcher Contreras, but umpires upheld the call on the field after the Dodgers challenged.
The Cubs received a break. When the crowd of 54,449 saw the signal, boos rang out. On ESPN Radio, play-by-play announcer Dan Shulman read a statement from MLB that explained replays "could not definitely determine the hand got in."
To which Aaron Boone, Shulman's sidekick, said: "A huge miss."
The Cubs' suddenly hot bats made the most controversial play moot. After scoring four runs in the breakthrough fourth, the Cubs erupted for five in the sixth. Anthony Rizzo homered and had three hits, an encouraging development on a night full of them for the Cubs.
The Cubs' only crisis came when Maddon approached the mound in the fifth to pull starter John Lackey, whose grumpy reaction revealed his feelings for anybody unable to read lips. But Maddon took no chances with a 5-0 lead, not after two straight walks by Lackey, who threw 72 pitches. In his second straight "big-boy" game, the pitcher who turns 38 Sunday showed signs of being an old man by major league standards, no matter how reverently the Cubs describe him.
Curiosity over Clayton Kershaw's availability overshadowed concern over Lackey's feelings anyway.
Now that the rejuvenated Cubs have reduced the NLCS to a three-game series, the specter of Kershaw lurks. A reporter asked Roberts, the Dodgers manager, if any scenario existed in which he would start Kershaw in Game 5.
"No," Roberts said.
That was before the Dodgers lost 10-2, so we shall see about that. Trust Roberts at your own risk.
But feel free to believe in the Cubs again.
