The 5 most memorable Cubs wins of 2020

The 2020 baseball season didn’t end the way we would have liked it to, as Cubs fans. Sure, winning the World Series was a longshot, but it would have been nice to win a postseason game, or perhaps the first round, and progress past two days’ worth of playoff games.

Since that didn’t happen, let’s look back at my choice of the five most memorable Cubs victories of 2020, presented in chronological order.

July 24: Cubs 3, Brewers 0

The very first day of the abbreviated 60-game season brought a memorable performance by Kyle Hendricks, who threw a complete-game three-hit shutout against the Brewers at Wrigley Field. In fact, if not for Orlando Arcia, Kyle might have thrown a no-hitter, as Arcia had all three Milwaukee hits.

Here are all nine of Kyle’s strikeouts, plus the final out [VIDEO].

September 4: Cubs 4, Cardinals 1

Yu Darvish threw five perfect innings, retiring the first 15 Cardinals, before Matt Carpenter homered off him leading off the sixth. That was the only hit — and baserunner — allowed by Darvish, who completed seven outstanding innings, striking out 11.

Check out the velocity and movement on these Darvish K’s [VIDEO].

Willson Contreras went 3-for-4 and homered in this win.

September 13: Cubs 12, Brewers 0

This, of course, is Alec Mills’ no-hitter, the game of his life. It was made easier by the Cubs’ offensive explosion, their biggest run-scoring output of the 2020 season. Jason Heyward went 2-for-3 and scored three runs, Victor Caratini was 2-for-4 with three RBI and David Bote homered.

Here’s the final out and celebration [VIDEO].

September 15: Cubs 6, Indians 5

The Cubs led 5-3 going to the ninth in this game at Wrigley, but Francisco Lindor hit a two-run homer off Jeremy Jeffress to tie the game at 5.

Kris Bryant walked with one out in the bottom of the ninth and Anthony Rizzo singled him to third. The Indians brought in Nick Wittgren to pitch to Willson Contreras and Wittgren hit him on a 1-1 pitch to load the bases.

Cameron Maybin was sent up to pinch hit for Billy Hamilton and Wittgren’s very next pitch won the game for the Cubs [VIDEO].

Contreras, incidentally, led the major leagues with 14 HBP this year. That’s the equivalent of 38 HBP in a 162- game season, which would be sixth-most all time (second-most since 1900).

September 25: Cubs 10, White Sox 0

Beating the White Sox is always satisfying, and a blowout score makes it much better. But the reason this game is in this article is this batflip [VIDEO].

That might be the best Cubs batflip ever. Three innings later, Sox reliever Jimmy Cordero hit Contreras [VIDEO].

It has been speculated that one of the reasons Sox manager Rick Renteria got let go after the season was this incident. Whether that’s true or not, Cordero did get suspended for three games.

Contreras homered again in that game and Kyle Schwarber, Victor Caratini and Javier Baez also went deep off Sox pitching.

2020 wasn’t the baseball season (or year, for that matter) that any of us wanted, but it certainly did bring us some memorable moments.