HOW THE MIDWEST WAS WON

THE STORY OF THE 2019 SOUTH BEND CUBS CHAMPIONSHIP RUN

By Max Thoma

“Please don’t drop this ball, please god don’t let my glove break, don’t let me trip, don’t blink, don’t sneeze, don’t cough, please for the love of god catch this ball… That was all that was going through my mind.” 144 games. 161 days. A perfect postseason.

The season ended when Cole Roederer peered up into the Clinton night sky and squeezed a flyball in center field. For the first time since 2005, South Bend had won the Midwest League Championship.

But how did this team get there?

Before a single bottle of champagne was popped, the 2019 South Bend Cubs was a group of young men fighting just to scrape its way into the postseason. The Cubs finished the first half of the 2019 campaign with a 39-32 record, putting them in fourth place in the Eastern Division, not good enough for a postseason berth.

The Cubs started the second half weakly. Going into game two of a doubleheader in Beloit on July 21 the team was just 12-16, the furthest below .500 they had been all year. Jeff Passantino, one of the teams five all-stars, had already been promoted to Myrtle Beach, and South Bend’s highest rated prospect (and fellow all-star) Brailyn Marquez would be promoted to Myrtle Beach in just a couple weeks on August 6.

So, with 46 games left they needed to make a run, and that’s exactly what Buddy Bailey’s men did.

A couple familiar faces rejoined the fray: South Bend’s 2018 closer, Brian Glowicki, and fellow right-handed reliever, Brendan King. “I just had a chip on my shoulder,” Glowicki said. I could either let this affect me for the rest of the year or I could just go out there, compete, and get back to who I am and what I do on the mound, and that’s what I did.”

Glowicki and King locked down the backend of the bullpen down the stretch and South Bend not only won game two of that doubleheader vs. Beloit but won nine of their next ten games to close out July.

The Cubs clinched a wildcard playoff spot on August 30 and rattled off a 27-14 run to end the regular season. Two days after clinching a spot in the postseason, on the penultimate day of the regular season, the team activated Brennen Davis and Levi Jordan from the IL.

“To be out for close to two months I just kept itching to get back and start doing baseball stuff again,” Jordan said. “And following the team knowing they were making a playoff run it was even more exciting for me to start getting healthy again to try to get back and contribute at the right time.”

The Cubs first round matchup pitted them against the team they just beat twice consecutively to end the season, the Bowling Green Hot Rods.

Game one was an old-fashioned pitcher’s duel at Four Winds Field. The first inning ended with the Cubs up 2-0, but they wouldn’t score again the rest of the night. Faustino Carrera tossed five scoreless frames and the Hot Rods didn’t plate a run until the eighth. With the lead cut to one, Glowicki retired the last four batters he faced and punched out Nick Schnell to pick up his 23rd career save with South Bend, moving him into a tie for seventh on the all-time franchise record list.

After the win the men hopped aboard the team bus and traveled 368 miles to southern Kentucky for game two.

South Bend fell behind 2-0 and came back to tie the score twice but headed into the

ninth inning down 4-3. Bailey’s team hadn’t recorded a single ninth inning come-from-behind victory all season long.

Not yet.

Nelson Maldonado’s infield single tied it, and Jake Slaughter, who drove in what wound up being the game-winning run in the first inning of game one, delivered the game-winning run again, this time in the ninth. The Cubs finally had their first lead.

The offense added two more runs and King retired all nine batters he faced in the final three frames, earning the win and advancing the Cubs to the Division Championship.

South Bend returned home to start another best-of-three series.

“In some ways it made it better for us,” said Bailey. “We got to play the first game of the series for us at home… in the playoffs if you can get up in the series it takes a little bit of heat off of you and your players and puts more on the other team.”

Bailey entered the next round as the active leader in wins among MiLB managers; his opponent, John Shoemaker, entered fifth.

The Cubs never trailed Great Lakes in the SemiFinals. A four-spot in the second inning of game one got South Bend going and even though the Loons cut the deficit to one, Glowicki picked up a five-out save and the Cubs won 6-4.

This time the team took a 1-0 series advantage northeast, traveling 228 miles to the heart of Michigan and Dow Diamond.

Game two of the series wasn’t much of a contest. South Bend plated at least one run in four of the first five innings and Derek Casey and Fauris Guerrero combined to allow just one run in the first six frames. King came on and retired all seven batters he faced, picking up the save as the Cubs won 7-3 and clinched a berth in the Championship.

Two days later South Bend hosted game one for the third straight series. Now the opponent was Clinton. Chicago Cub reliever Kendall Graveman, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, got the starting nod, making his first career appearance with the ballclub.

Kendall Graveman warms up prior to his rehab start in Game 1 of the Midwest League Championship on September 11. Credit: Clinton Cole.

Six pitches into the Championship Series the Cubs fell behind 1-0. But Graveman grew into the game, allowing only one more hit, and the bullpen stymied the Lumberjacks offense, tossing 5.1 scoreless innings.

Maldonado unleashed his second homer of the season in the seventh, giving the Cubs a 2-1 edge. After South Bend added another run, Clinton brought the go-ahead run to the plate in the ninth but Glowicki induced a groundout and the Cubs picked up their fifth straight postseason victory.

The good guys led the whole way in game two, until Clinton was down to their final strike. With rain falling hard and the South Bend faithful on their feet, the Lumberjacks tied it up.

As the game headed for extras, the rain proved too much to continue and the tarp came out. A one-hour and thirty-eight-minute rain delay ensued, and a game that started on September 12 would finish in the early hours of September 13.

“We knew we had to stay composed and we ended up finishing that game at like 12:30,” Davis said. “I remember staying so ready to go and mentally prepared… if you can come out on top and then win one more game, it’s what kept everybody together and ready to go.”

With two outs in the tenth, a breaking ball skipped away from the catcher and Roederer slid in safely from third.

Walk. It. Off.

The Cubs took a commanding 2-0 series lead and would head 230 miles west to the eastern edge of Iowa with a chance to clinch the Championship in game three.

Riley Thompson took the mound for his second start of the postseason. “Coming into that game, you know it’s the Championship Series, last game, I just want to absolutely give it to them,” Thompson said. “That’s the only thing on my mind.”

And give it to them he did.

Thompson struck out the first five batters he faced and the Cubs offense staked him an early lead; Jordan crushed his second homer of the season, his first since April 28, and put them up 2-0 in the second.

Riley Thompson reacts to his 10th strikeout in Game 3 of the Midwest League Championship. Credit: Casey McDonald

“It was a great feeling, not for myself, but to be able to contribute and be a part of the team’s success,” Jordan Said.

Thompson continued to groove, tossing five no-hit innings, striking out ten batters for the first time in his career and facing the minimum. The only runner that reached he picked off of first.

Guerrero, Eugenio Palma and Glowicki got the final 12 outs without allowing a single run. And with one out to go Glowicki induced a flyball to end the game.

“Man, as soon as he caught that I was so hyped I just turned and looked at the dugout, everyone’s running at me, you live for those moments,” Glowicki said. “I’ll remember that ‘til I die, that was so much fun.”

The red-hat-wearing, mustache-mayhemrocking men from South Bend got to pop champagne on their opponents’ field, for the third straight time.

South Bend captured its first title since 2005 and its first as a Chicago Cubs affiliate. They ended on a 34-14 run, including a perfect 7-0 postseason.

What made this team so unbeatable in their quest to bring a trophy back to South Bend?

Bailey cited everyone doing their job and getting hot at the right time; Davis said it was holding each other accountable and taking no days off; while team owner Andrew Berlin talked about the guys playing their hearts out and showing tremendous grit and resolve. No one answer is correct, but when a team makes such an incredible run to end the season, sometimes credit can lie with a superstition that brought them all together.

When asked what clicked for the team down the stretch, Roederer’s answer was swift and succinct... “Mustache mayhem, 100%.”

Red hats and mustaches carried the South Bend Cubs through the 2019 post-season. Credit: @SBCubs