Chicago Cubs: My favorite memory vs. every National League team

Chicago Cubs: Washington Nationals

Before 2005, the Washington Nationals played in Montreal and were the Expos. I had to think hard, and I had a hard time coming up with many Cubs-Expos moments. There were a couple:

• April 3, 1998: The Cubs beat the Expos in the Cubs’ home opener, 6-2. The seventh-inning stretch tribute to Harry Caray still gets me to this day.
• April 8, 2003: The Cubs beast the Expos, 6-1, in the Cubs’ home opener.

As for after the team moved to our nation’s capital, two events immediately come to mind. One is from August 12, 2018, when the Cubs were playing the Nationals at Wrigley Field on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. Max Scherzer had shut down the Cubs for most of the game, but they loaded the bases against Ryan Madson in the bottom of the ninth, down 3-0.

David Bote, who already had hit the crucial homer against the Diamondbacks mentioned above just a couple weeks prior, pinch-hit and ran the count to 2-2 before blasting a ball to center for a walk-off grand slam. Now that’s the ultimate dream we all have as kids: hitting a grand slam down by three runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

However, I don’t think there’s much that can top Game 5 of the 2017 NLDS in Washington, a 9-8 Cubs victory. Aside from Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, considering what was on the line, that was the most intense Cubs game I ever watched, a dramatic back-and-forth contest that ended when Wade Davis struck out Bryce Harper on a low-and-in curveball. The Cubs would lose in the NLCS to the Dodgers, but I still have great memories of watching that game.