Cubs break their Wrigley Field postseason hex, needing just one more win to advance

By winning their postseason opener Tuesday at Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs did more than just put the visiting San Diego Padres in a hole. They also defied nearly a century of postseason precedent.

The 3-1 victory was only the 16th for the home team in the storied history of Wrigley. Compare that with the 30 home team postseason losses, and you get a staggering .348 playoff winning percentage at the Friendly Confines.

Most teams would view a postseason series played entirely at their home as an unadulterated blessing. The Cubs? We’ll see.

Since Wrigley was first introduced to postseason baseball in 1929, the beautiful ballpark on the North Side has hosted one or more playoff games in 16 seasons prior to this one. Yet in only two of those 16 – 1984 and 2016 – have the Cubs emerged from those games with a winning record on their home field.

Prior to Tuesday, they hadn’t won a home postseason game since Oct. 18, 2017, when Jake Arrieta – with late help from Wade Davis – beat the Dodgers 3-2. One day later, the Dodgers crushed the Cubs 11-1 at Wrigley to close out the NLCS, marking the start of a stretch of four straight home playoff losses from 2018-2020.

Wrigley Field hasn't been a kind playoff home to the Chicago Cubs

Wrigley’s penchant for turning on its own team’s postseason hopes and dreams began early. The first postseason game ever played at the Friendly Confines took place on Oct. 8, 1929. Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cubs 3-1 behind Howard Ehmke’s 13 strikeouts. One day later, the A’s won again 9-3, before the series shifted to Philadelphia. It never came back to Wrigley.

In fact, the Cubs didn’t win a single home postseason game until Oct. 6, 1935, when Lon Warneke beat the Detroit Tigers 3-1 in Wrigley’s seventh postseason game.

Cubs fans of not too great a vintage will sadly recall the team’s home playoff struggles of two decades ago.  Between 2003 and 2008, home fans witnessed just two postseason victories against nine losses, five of them coming in succession beginning with the Bartman Game of Oct. 14, 2003. That was Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. The streak continued through their elimination by the Diamondbacks and Dodgers in the 2007 and 2008 NLDS.

The Cubs’ only real run of home postseason success occurred, fittingly enough, during the World Series-winning run of 2016. That year, Cubs fans rejoiced in two NLDS wins over the San Francisco Giants, and two of three against the Dodgers in the NLCS, the last of those being the Game 6 5-0 shutout clincher pitched by Kyle Hendricks.

And yet, even in team triumph Wrigley still held pitfalls for the good guys. They lost two of the three World Series games played at Wrigley, ultimately winning the World Series because they won three of the four games played in Cleveland.

One good omen from the series-opening win? The last four times the Cubs won the first game of a home postseason series – the 2015 Division Series with St. Louis, the 2016 Division Series with San Francisco, the 2016 NLCS with Los Angeles and the 2017 Division Series with Washington – they went on to win the series.

So perhaps that’s a good sign for the next 48 hours.