CHICAGO — Nico Hoerner looked like a character in a “Saturday Night Live” skit, sitting in front of his locker Monday night with a smile on his face and a cowboy hat on his head. La Bouche’s “Be My Lover,” a 1990s Eurodance song, blasted from the sound system inside the Wrigley Field clubhouse as the Cubs savored their first walk-off win of the young season.
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“Yan (Gomes) put it on my head,” Hoerner said. “We’ve got some sort of celebratory hat that I guess I’ve been assigned to. That’s what we’re going with. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
No chance, Nico. Not after the Cubs outlasted All-Star pitcher Luis Castillo, withstood Jarred Kelenic’s skyscraping, game-tying home run in the ninth inning and finally beat a Mariners team with World Series aspirations. It ended at 9:17 p.m. when Hoerner knocked a ball into right field for the RBI single that scored pinch-runner Nick Madrigal, who had stolen third base on a risky play that made Gomes wonder if Madrigal “thought he was invisible.” This 3-2 victory underneath the ancient ballpark’s new LED lights felt like a game the Cubs would have lost last April.
Overreactions happen at this time of year. But for better or worse, these moments can still be extremely revealing. It’s hard to remember the last time there was real joy or major buzz around this team. Maybe when the Cubs swept the Cardinals as full-capacity crowds returned to the Friendly Confines in June of 2021, but that surge only teased fans and temporarily fooled players and staffers before an 11-game losing streak forced president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer to sell at the trade deadline.
So much of the “It’s Different Here” messaging felt forced. If you don’t win enough, the slogans and the gimmicks become a tired act. But there was something refreshing about the smirk on Hoerner’s face as he walked back into the locker room, noticed a group of reporters around Gomes and threw the cowboy hat at the veteran catcher.
“I just saw the hat and I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s the new sheriff in town,’” Gomes said. “Things like that happen organically. I literally just saw it laying around and I just grabbed it and said, ‘Hey, Nico’s got to wear this to do interviews.’”
It is obviously too soon to begin trying to track down Jonathan Herrera, the utility infielder who once got airtime for wearing a rally bucket on his head and a helmet with fake hands on top, to symbolize the celebration gesture the 2015 Cubs used during their shocking run to the National League Championship Series. But it is a long season and the goofy stuff is a much better sign than pointing fingers or answering questions about contracts and trade rumors.
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Gomes, one of the defense-first catchers the Cubs valued over Willson Contreras, kept calling for curveballs as Drew Smyly retired the first 10 hitters he faced and limited the Mariners to one run across five innings. Five different Cubs relievers covered the next five innings as manager David Ross pushed the right bullpen buttons. Cody Bellinger and Eric Hosmer — two former All-Stars who signed one-year deals after getting released this past offseason — drove in runs with timely hits. Dansby Swanson, the new Gold Glove shortstop, made another key defensive play, cleanly fielding a groundball and decisively throwing to third base to erase a leadoff double in the eighth inning.
“Getting off to a good start is important for anybody,” Gomes said. “But at the same time, it’s important to understand what we’re building here. If we lose a series, if we lose a couple games, we can’t hang our heads. We got way too good of a team, way too good of a culture, way too good of a fan base behind us every single game to hang our heads. We’ve built a team, from top to bottom, that can really do this. We got a lot of experience here. When something happens, we got 10 to 15 guys that have done it already. We can turn to different things.”
Like Seiya Suzuki. When a team spends nearly $100 million to acquire a player, his absence should be noticeable. It’s that way with the Cubs and Suzuki, the Japanese outfielder who’s almost fully recovered from the strained left oblique that wiped out most of his spring training. That’s one lever that can be pulled as the early schedule becomes increasingly more difficult.
Ross said a best-case projection would be activating Suzuki at some point during the team’s upcoming West Coast trip. A 5-4 start gives the Cubs a chance to hang around and create some momentum. Monday marked the beginning of a tough stretch in which the Cubs are scheduled to play the Mariners, Dodgers and Padres 13 times in 18 days. Those three teams from last year’s playoff field should show how much the Cubs have closed the gap after a $300 million-plus offseason spending spree.
“You just want to see how you measure up,” Ross said. “We got a lot of guys that are up for the challenge. They’re not going to back down from anybody.”
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Even Hoerner — who finalized his three-year, $35 million contract extension before Opening Day to cement his status as a core player at Wrigley Field — didn’t stick to the one-game-at-a-time script.
“It felt significant to win that game,” Hoerner said, “just to know you can beat good teams in close games and do the extra-inning game. All that stuff matters.”
(Photo of Patrick Wisdom dumping water on Nico Hoerner after Monday’s win over the Mariners: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
