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Giants, Cubs set stage for riveting series
- Updated: October 8, 2016
CHICAGO — This is going to be fun, isn’t it?
We knew this National League Division Series would be about pitching and defense, but who knew there would be this much great pitching and defense from the Cubs and Giants?
• Shop postseason gear: Giants | Cubs
Game Date Time Matchup TV Gm 1 Oct. 7 CHC 1, SF 0 Gm 2 Oct. 8 8 p.m. SF @ CHC MLBN Gm 3 Oct. 10 9:30 p.m. CHC @ SF FS1 *Gm 4 Oct. 11 8 or 8:30 p.m. CHC @ SF FS1 *Gm 5 Oct. 13 8 or 8:30 p.m. SF @ CHC FS1 *- If necessary | All times listed ETShop for postseason gear: Cubs | Giants • Complete Postseason coverage
Maybe it was just one night, but the Cubs’ 1-0 victory over the Giants was such an electric, intense, fast-moving game that we could have been watching the Dodgers and Twins in the 1965 World Series.
Jon Lester and Johnny Cueto neatly filled the Sandy Koufax and Mudcat Grant roles, and it’s hard to imagine that Dodger Stadium and the Met were rocking any louder than Wrigley Field on Friday night, in the opening act of “2016 Cubs, Your World Series Favorites,” with the second act coming Saturday night (8 p.m. ET, MLB Network).
For Lester and his teammates, Javier Baez’s eighth-inning home run off Cueto — a moonshot that fluttered into the basket that was built atop the outfield fence in 1970, to stop Bleacher Bums from jumping onto the field — provided a perfect ending for a day in which Giants-Cubs was the last of four postseason games.
“Fun atmosphere from really just driving in this afternoon, coming to the ballpark and seeing all the people on Clark [Street] and all that stuff,” said Lester, who won World Series games for the Red Sox in 2007 and ’13. “That was my first playoff game [pitching for] the Cubs at home. That was pretty cool. A pretty cool experience. Great baseball game. Really a lot to say about it, but not a lot to say about it. You know what I mean?”
Cubs manager Joe Maddon called it “a classic kind of an old-school baseball game,” and even the time of game — 2 hours, …
