Cubs even World Series behind Arrieta's arm, Schwarber's bat

The long, painful slog that was Game 2 of the World Series ended in most appropriate fashion Wednesday night: sopped by a rain that couldn’t wash away the funk of bad baseball permeating the Chicago Cubs’ 5-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians.

This, the Cubs’ first World Series victory in 71 years, wasn’t just ugliness in the classic sense: a panoply of bumbling errors and brain farts and fundamental heresy, all of which came in heavy doses from the Indians. Worse was the embodiment of modern baseball at its mind-numbing slowest, with too many pitches leading to too languid a pace that threatened the first World Series postponement since 2008.

Major League Baseball moved the game’s start time up an hour to 7:08 p.m. ET, cognizant of the coming storm front. The 60-minute head start nearly did the game no good, as the Baseball Gods placed a call to the Weather Gods and implored them: “Please make this stop.” The rain relented enough for Aroldis Chapman to secure the final out and even the series at one game apiece as it heads back to Wrigley Field for the North Side of Chicago’s first World Series games in more than seven decades.

Surely it will beat the mess that played out at Progressive Field on Wednesday: four hours and four minutes to play nine innings, 357 pitches thrown between the teams, a pair of errors from Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis, at least three miscues from Indians right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall and a partridge with bird flu in a half-dead pear tree.

Kyle Schwarber drove in two runs for Chicago in a Game 2 World Series win.

Certainly the game did have its moments, though most of them served more as silencers for the 38,172 in attendance hoping to see the Indians take a two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-seven series. Cubs hitters reached base 19 times, nine on hits, eight on walks, a pair on Kipnis’ goofs, and sprinkled in among them were a first-inning RBI double from Anthony Rizzo, a fourth-inning RBI triple from Ben Zobrist and a pair of RBI singles from Kyle Schwarber, whose return from a season-long stint on the disabled list looks better by the plate appearance.

There were plenty of those for the Cubs, as the Indians cycled through pitchers, starting with Trevor Bauer, whose 87 pitches bought him 3 2/3 innings of work. Six more Indians relievers combined for 109 over the subsequent 5 1/3 innings. Chicago hitters, among the game’s most patient group, worked Indians pitchers to full counts all night, disposing of Bauer early and treating Zach McAllister, Bryan Shaw, Danny Salazar, Jeff Manship, Dan Otero and Mike Clevinger with similar levels of rudeness.

It’s tough to blame the Cubs for such discourtesy. In Game 1, Indians starter Corey Kluber and relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen weren’t exactly generous hosts, shutting out Chicago for the third time this postseason. Holding down the Cubs’ lineup for consecutive nights was a task too large for Cleveland, and scoring off starter Jake Arrieta proved nearly equally difficult.

For 5 1/3 innings, Arrieta rendered the Indians hitless. Command wavering at the start of the game, Arrieta settled in to a nice rhythm and cruised until Kipnis’ hustle double in the sixth. Kipnis later scored on a wild pitch, the lone run the Indians could muster in the cold that hovered around 45 degrees on a night that lingered on and on.

Not every World Series game is an aesthetic classic, a clinic of great play, and to the Cubs, who hadn’t won one since 1945, and who haven’t experienced a championship since 1908, winning ugly is every bit as pretty as winning pretty would’ve been. They ground down the Indians and ground up their chances of a win, at-bat by at-bat, pitch by pitch, moment by moment. Four hours may have felt like an eternity, but when you’ve waited 71 years for such a moment, it’s worth every dawdling second.