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On Thursday, August 11, 2005, the Cubs opened up a four-game series against the Cardinals, the reigning NL champs. Maddux was in the second year of his second stint with the organization and came into the game 8-9, facing a 13-5 Mark Mulder. Triple-crown threat Derek Lee helped Maddux’s cause with a three-run, 430-foot surface-to-Waveland missile in the fourth, his first of two HRs in the game, that gave the Cubs a five-run cushion on their way to an 11-4 win and Maddux’s first complete game in a year. But what stuck with me most afterward was Albert Pujols’s third at-bat against Maddux, in the top of the fifth.
Pujols’s first four seasons in the bigs, 2001-2004, were one of the best starts in the history of the game, and he hadn’t slowed down in ’05 (he’d go on to win the NL MVP). He entered the game 6-14 (.429) with two HRs and one strikeout versus Maddux. By the time Pujols emerged from the on-deck circle in his third plate appearance, the Cardinals’ nine, one, and two hitters had rallied on two outs to produce two runs and men on the corners. With Pujols representing the tying run, the table was set for a dramatic turn in the game. Having given up eight hits and four runs in just 4 and 2/3 innings, Maddux clearly did not have his best stuff. Yet nobody was warming up in the Cubs bullpen. “Surely they’ll walk him,” I blurted out loud from section 226, some 40 rows back between home and first. Second base was open, and Pujols had already deposited one Maddux pitch into the left-center bleachers in the first like it was batting practice. Why would they take this chance?
Maddux looked down and made a fist as he returned to the dugout. Pujols inhaled deeply as he looked up and away, then very deliberately took off his helmet and batting gloves, handing them to the batboy while staring out, expressionless, toward first base.
