Heroic moments in sports can often make us forget about the happenings that immediately proceeded them.
A great example of this is Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run in Game 7 to end the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and Yankees. It's the play that everyone remembers and is hallowed by every MLB fan, though it was actually Hal Baker's eighth inning go-ahead home run that was statistically more important. A completely different example comes from a World Series over 50 years later, though the basic premise stays the same: one great play wiped away the stuff that came before it. In this case, we're talking about the tumultuous 2016 Game 7 experience of Cubs catcher David Ross, who recounted the events of that epic matchup on Audacy and MLB's "The Run" podcast.
Entering the game in the bottom of the fifth with a four-run lead to replace Willson Contreras, at the same time as Jon Lester came in to relieve Kyle Hendricks, it didn't take long for the trajectory of the game to go downhill for the Cubs.
"We're doing pretty darn good, and I get in the game and chaos ensues. I was worried I was going to have the bad reputation that was going to go along with this World Series," Ross explained. "The (Jason) Kipnis matchup was perfect for Jon, he hadn't done anything, and you get the swinging bunt. I come out, field it, don't get a nice grip of it, and I had some stuff tighten up on me for a minute and I just turn and almost killed Rizzo. I threw it in, like, the fifth row of seats behind first base. That felt phenomenal."
Two pitches later, with runners now on second and third thanks to Ross's throwing error, Lester threw a wild pitch that certainly wasn't pretty. However, neither was Ross's attempt to field it cleanly and prevent further damage.
"...Jon shook to the breaking ball, and I think I knew he wanted to bounce it, but he bounced it really short," Ross recalled. "I tried to block it and it hit off my face mask and kicked to the right. And as I went to get up, I rolled my ankle, tripped over my feet. I mean, it gets worse the more I tell it, right? This is such a bad replay in my mind.
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"I trip over my feet. Our doctor and everybody thinks I'm concussed with all my concussion history. I stumble over, grab the ball and throw to home plate. It's too late, Kipnis scores from second. So an absolute mess ensues as soon as I get in the game, like three or four pitches in, and yeah, that's a bad feeling for sure."
But, as I mentioned before, you might not remember all of this with the painstaking detail that Ross does. That's because he made up for it in a big way the very next frame, after the Cubs were able to get out of the inning.
"I got on deck and things were just working extremely fast and moving fast as it does sometimes in the big leagues, and especially in the World Series, so I tried to slow down, calm down and have my at-bat," Ross said. "I had done some homework on Andrew Miller, and I know Andrew, I know his pitch is the slider. I wanted to see one, you know. I was a little anxious early on, I remember a lot going on in my head, but then finally I got 0-2 on me and he threw me a fastball up and I remember seeing that really well. It was up around my eyes and I felt like my timing was right, I was in my two-strike approach, trying to simplify things, just touch the baseball.
"He shook and, doing my homework that I did, most of the times he shook, he shook to fastball, so I tried to stay ready for the fastball. And he threw it down where I could hit it and I put a good swing on it and I start running. Rajai Davis is running back in center field, and it looks like he's sizing it up and I'm like, please, do not catch this ball. I'm thinking I'm going to run right out of the right field gate if he catches this ball, that's how my career's gonna end."
Obviously, things went differently.
"I feel like I had just let in two runs, so everybody always asks me why I didn't celebrate," Ross said. "I feel like I had just gotten one run back, one of the two I had just let in, and my mind went straight to who's up next for them and how much further we had to go. You don't take anything for granted and I think they'll be plenty of time to celebrate after we win, but let's get the win secured first."
As it turns out, there certainly was plenty of time to celebrate after Game 7 was all said and done. Listen to the rest of Ross's interview above and check out the whole series here, with interviews and memories from several other guests.
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