MILWAUKEE — A fiery Justin Steele burst into the Chicago Cubs dugout after his fielding gaffes contributed to a two-run third inning, and he began screaming “wake the f−−− up” to no one in particular.
Or maybe it was to everyone in particular. Either way, the wake-up call worked.
Ian Happ’s two-run, eighth inning home run launched the Cubs to a 5-3 victory against the Milwaukee Brewers, giving them a shot at winning the series.
Steele apologized to any kids who were watching and reading lips.
“I kind of wish I had waited or done something different,” Steele said. “Going forward, do a little bit better job controlling my emotions in front of fans and people watching. We won the ballgame, and that was the most important thing.”
Contrary to popular opinion, the Cubs still have a pulse, faint though it is.
Still, it’s just one game that left them at 39-45 and 10½ games behind the Brewers. They have to wake the bleep up again for the next month to avoid a potential sell-off.
Steele didn’t want to talk about the reasons for his all-caps message, which came after he contributed to a botched rundown and dropped a dribbler that was later ruled a hit. Counsell sanitized Steele’s words, saying “essentially he said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
Um, sure.
“You go through a stretch like we are, that frustration is real,” Happ said of Steele.
Added Counsell: “He was just voicing his emotion from a place of love.”
So was it a much-needed message?
“Any time you say something from a good place, it’s welcome,” Counsell said.
Steele agreed, saying it came from “a place of love and passion and want-to. I want to win baseball games. That’s what I show up every day to do.”
A Cubs-Brewers affair in Milwaukee is never just a baseball game. It’s also part melodrama, part sing-a-long, part drinkathon and part Sausage Race.
If these Cubs stress you out, rest assured you’re not alone. Watching them play causes more anxiety than a midnight ride on the “L.” When Counsell goes home at night after a long day at work, he’s also feeling the strain of what just occurred.
“I will not think about the job for 24 hours at home,” Counsell promised before the game. “I think anybody that does is making a mistake.”
Counsell’s calm exterior makes it appear as though nothing ever bothers him. Not even Cody Bellinger forgetting the outs and getting doubled off first or Miguel Amaya’s catcher’s interference calls or Saturday’s botched rundown, which Counsell admitted they “screwed up.”
The day began with the Brewers seemingly trying to lure Cubs hitters to sleep during batting practice, playing a medley of soft rock tunes on the PA system. The Cubs took a 2-0 lead on the first two pitches from Tobias Myers — a single by Nico Hoerner and a home run by Michael Busch.
After the Brewers tied the game 3-3 in the fourth, they had much of the crowd of 42,238 singing the chorus to a country song: “Everybody in the bar getting tipsy.” It was a reminder of last year’s classic Fourth of July game in which David Ross popped his top over the closing of the roof midinning. Steele later said of the wild affair: “That game was drunk.”
This one might not have been drunk. But it definitely was tipsy.
After Steele recovered from his third-inning blues, he pitched three more shutout innings. Luke Little and Porter Hodge got it to the ninth, passing their auditions as the new setup combination.
Happ’s homer in the eighth, his second late-inning, go-ahead shot in three games, gave the Cubs the lead. Counsell inserted human pin cushion Héctor Neris back into the closer’s role and watched him seal the deal in a hairy ninth, stranding the tying runs with two strikeouts.
Steele has gone 16 starts without a win despite stellar pitching. No wonder he let it out.
“The lack of wins is definitely odd, but it’s the nature of the games,” Counsell said.
So how stressful has this season been on Counsell?
“Look, I’m at the same place we’re all in, and (that’s) figuring out ways for this team to perform better,” he said. “I’m not sure how me stressing out about it is going to help that.”
When it was explained that he was brought in as the “missing piece” of the puzzle so it would be normal to stress out over the Cubs’ woeful first half, Counsell shot down the narrative.
“I don’t stress out about that,” he said. “Again, because I don’t think that’s going to help. When you don’t think you’re helping to find solutions, I don’t know if it’s stressful, but that’s what keeps you up.”
So despite pleas from some jittery fans to detonate over the recent goings-on, Counsell is not going to change. He doesn’t feel it makes sense to try to be something you’re not, so what you see is what you’re going to get.
Asked when he felt a challenge like this season, he said “every day is a challenge to be a good day, a right day, so if you don’t come to the field with that in mind and that frame of mind, you’re doing yourself and your team a disservice. … There are challenges every single year in every different type of season. And this is no different.”
Cubs President Jed Hoyer said he has heard the same things in the past about every team that’s scuffling to score runs. He agreed the Cubs have a deficit of “edgy players,” but that makes no difference in how they’re performing.
“In my career, whenever a team is struggling offensively, the natural thing everyone talks about is the team is flat, they lack an edge, they lack fire,” Hoyer said Friday. “But you just can’t have fire when you’re making a right turn and going into the dugout all the time. … Do I think we lack an edge, lack fire, lack energy? No, I think we’re struggling offensively.”
The edge returned Saturday, courtesy of Steele.
“Raw emotion,” Happ said of Steele. “Everybody seems how much he cares, how much he wants to win baseball games.”
Whether that edge becomes a trend or remains an anomaly could determine the Cubs’ fate the rest of the season.
