Chicago Cubs: Why Kerry Wood’s 20K game stands out

Chicago Cubs: Just looking beyond the box score, one can look back on May 6th, 1998, and see why that game stands out in franchise history.

Now more than ever, people are watching old reruns of games with there being no sports actively going on. Plenty of Chicago Cubs fans enjoyed watching the rerun of Kerry Wood‘s 20 strikeout game from 1998 on ESPN this past Saturday afternoon.

Baseball fans, players, and analysts have spent years breaking down that performance, which broke the NL record for strikeouts in a single game. Going by the Bill James Game Score, a method of measuring the effectiveness of a starting pitcher in a game, it is calculated as the best nine-inning game pitching performance in baseball history.

There are other reasons why this game stands out in Cubs and Chicago Sports history outside records and metrics. Often these factors can be overlooked considering the performance itself is all that matters, but it is still fun to look back at what helped make the game even more special.

Chicago Cubs: The crowd at Wrigley Field on May 6th, 1998 is not like one we are used to seeing today

One thing most classic Cubs games that happened at Wrigley Field the past 40 years have in common is 38,000+ fans in the stands. Whether playoffs or regular season, Wrigley has been more often packed than not the past few decades.

This was not the case at Wrigley for Wood’s 20K game. The ballpark was pretty empty, with attendance recorded at 15,758, according to baseball-reference. This was likely due to the fact it was a day game on a Wednesday early in the season with bad weather in the area. Most of the crowd was either in the lower level of the grandstand or the left/right-field bleachers. The upper deck of the grandstand was virtually empty, with maybe a few hundred spectators.

However, the few people that were there made the most of the experience. A group of fans in the left-field bleachers held up all the “K” signs after each strikeout got a lot of attention on the broadcast. The rest of the crowd cheered louder with each strikeout and started getting on their feet in the middle innings each time Wood got to two strikes.

Pat Hughes, on the radio, said, “It feels like a World Series game” in the ninth inning regarding the energy in the ballpark. A stadium filled under half capacity creating such a memorable atmosphere made the game very special, especially for those who attended or watched live.

Chicago Cubs: It was a tough day for anyone to pitch in weather-wise.

How many historic pitching performances do we see happen in the pouring rain? It does not happen often, but it happened for Kerry Wood. It is one thing for a 20-year old pitcher to dominate the most feared lineup in the National League, it’s another to do it on a muddy mound with rain pouring down.

The game began under very gloomy skies with the threat of rain in the forecast. It was in the middle innings when the rain started to fall. People in the stands either went under the upper deck or put on plastic ponchos to stay dry as Wood kept firing away. By the seventh inning, much of the field was pretty soaked.

It got to a point where some feared the game would either be delayed or called. Thunder began to rumble in the skies when Moises Alou was facing Wood in the top of the seventh. Even if there were just a delay, Wood would have been replaced when play resumed. No delays were called, and the rain held off from being too bad to play in. Regardless it was still impressive for the young kid to keep his command on a wet mound.

It is hard to believe it has been more than two decades since this historic game took place. There is a whole new generation of adult Cubs fans who were either not born or too young to remember the game. Luckily today, there are plenty of ways to re-watch the game.