Travis Wood hit a grand slam against the White Sox in the 2013 Crosstown Classic against the White Sox and it feels like 10 lifetimes ago.
That’s because it was in baseball years:
- Anthony Rizzo played his first full season
- The Cubs won 66 games going 24-45 in the 2nd half
- Travis Wood was the most valuable player at 5.1 bWAR
- Starlin Castro played 161 games and posted a -0.5 bWAR and 73 OPS+
- Starlin Castro should’ve gotten to 3,000 hits in his career
- Dansby Swanson was a freshman at Vanderbilt
- Jed Hoyer just turned 40
- Chris Sale pitched 214 innings for the White Sox and finished 5th in Cy Young voting despite an 11-14 overall record
- Dale Sveum’s last year as Cubs manager
- Finished 31 games out of 1st place getting shutout 16 times with 43 blown leads
- The top 12 players is laugh out loud funny:
Thinking about this era makes me feel 2 things:
- sickness
- lucky that Theo Epstein was able to turn it around so quickly from taking over in 2012 to 3 straight NLCS appearances from 2015-2017
And now 13 years later, we’re obviously so much better off compared to the White Sox that I’m uncomfortable joking about it.
Instead I’ll be joining the Section 108 guys tonight on their show to break down the series this year. So check that out when it’s published. I’ll retweet.
In the meantime here’s the full story from Cubs legend Travis Wood
Guy was so cool.
Reminds me of the time I got to sneak into the 2015 playoff party at Country Club (then Rebel) and we were upstairs in a back room. Gotta be 100+ people, most Cubs employees and their significant others. A song I can’t remember comes on and Travis Wood gets this look on his face like ohhhhhhh shit it’s about to go down. He starts clearing out space for a circle while his wife is hollering at him. Travis not again. Travis not again. And he’s like quiet down baby girl and just hold my beer while waving his arms horizontally to clear out a circle in this room like a high school dance. So now all eyes and attention are on Travis as his wife reminds him don’t do it Travis! It’s not worth it!
He shakes her off. I got this baby.
And standing right there in the back room of the upstairs of country club, Travis Wood pulls off a standing backflip in rhythm with the song and the place erupts like he just hit a mid-major buzzer beater to send us to the conference semis.
People are jumping up and down. Yelling. Screaming. Celebrating. LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO.
He grabs his beer from his old lady. She’s giving him lip. What if you fall and get hurt. And he’s slugging that Budweiser and just looks and says YEAH BUT THAT WAS FUCKIN AWESOME BABY
And that’s how I choose to remember Travis Wood.
PS – I miss Len Kasper so much.