Chicago Cubs: The Heroes of Wrigley Series presents Kerry Wood

Chicago Cubs: Getting right after a rocky start

It was an ominous start to the May 1998 ball-game for Kerry Wood, to say the least.  Wood felt like he didn’t have anything close to his best stuff and made it known in the Cubs pen.

"I don’t think I threw any strikes warming up. I was all over the place. Balls were all over the place. I think I actually shut it down early and flipped the ball to [pitching coach] Phil Regan and said, “We’re done. I’m loose. It’s only going to get worse. It’s time to start save my bullets.” It was an ugly warmup."

During the opening at-bat of the game, with Craig Biggio at the plate, Wood threw his first pitch wildly soaring directly into the home plate umpire Jerry Meal’s face mask.

"“Here we go,” exclaimed Wood.  “At least it can’t get any worse.”"

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The right-hander appeared to calm down after Biggio’s at-bat as he cruised through the first three innings.  While he was still a bit wild, the movement of his pitches kept fooling the Astros batters as they either whiffed at pitches outside of the zone or were caught looking at the ones that sexily painted the plate.

Both pitchers were dealing in those initial innings for their respective squads.

Houston’s starter, Shane Reynolds, had already struck out seven Cub batters.  However, he gave up four hits and surrendered an unearned run that scored Cubs first baseman, Mark Grace after an error by the left fielder, Dave Clark.

Wood kept pace with his counterpart, strikeout out six himself, allowing just one hit to shortstop (and future teammate) Ricky Gutierrez.

This base hit later drew the ire from the home crowd by the later innings, as it perhaps should’ve been recorded as a fielding miscue by Cub third baseman, Kevin Orie.

Nevertheless, the Cubs held a 1-0 lead after three frames as I cheered while lifting my head up from out of the bucket placed next to the couch.