Javier Baez touched home plate and pointed to the sky, the jet-engine noise filling Wrigley Field as he ran through the gauntlet in the home dugout, hopping up the stairs and raising his arms for a curtain call.
Baez had just crushed John Lackey’s 94-mph fastball out toward the right-field bleachers on Tuesday afternoon, firing back at the St. Louis Cardinals and showing off the natural power the Cubs saw in his boom-or-bust potential.
As darkness fell on the North Side, a crowd of 42,411 and a national-television audience watched the Cubs clinch their first postseason series ever at Clark and Addison, where they’ve been playing for a century.