Cubs can’t close out Giants, who force Game 4

SAN FRANCISCO — Maybe this was supposed to happen in a game pitting the Major Leagues’ winningest team of the season against the most successful one of the past decade. Neither would yield easily.

Joe Panik’s 13th-inning double scored Brandon Crawford to snap a 13th-inning tie and lift the Giants to a 6-5 victory over the Chicago Cubs in Game 3 of the National League Division Series. When the thoroughly entertained AT&T Park audience of 43,571 finally departed, slack-jawed from amazement, the Giants had trimmed the Cubs’ lead in the best-of-five series to 2-1.

Game 4 will be Tuesday (8:30 p.m. ET, FS1) at AT&T Park.

San Francisco, which won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014, recorded its 10th consecutive victory when facing postseason elimination after Crawford christened the 13th with a double off Mike Montgomery, who was pitching his fifth inning of relief. Up came Panik, whose drive caromed off the right-field wall as Crawford raced home.

That followed a series of wild shifts in momentum that strained belief.

Round One went to the Cubs, who jumped ahead on Jake Arrieta’s three-run, second-inning homer off Madison Bumgarner. Almost unnoticed, the Giants shaved their deficit to a single run before erupting for three in the eighth. Conor Gillaspie, whose three-run, ninth-inning homer accounted for the scoring in last Wednesday’s Wild Card Game at New York, accelerated this rally with a two-run triple off Cubs closer Aroldis Chapman, who apparently was installed to attempt a two-inning save.

Then Chicago, which finished a Major League-best 103-58 this season, erased San Francisco’s 5-3 edge in the ninth on Kris Bryant’s two-run homer off Sergio Romo, who allowed his first homer to a right-handed batter in 26 postseason appearances. Bryant’s drive caromed off the top of a cartoon automobile that forms part of …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com