Cubs off day real historical game thread

The real-life Cubs would have had today off after a three-game series at Milwaukee before heading home to Wrigley Field to face the Marlins tomorrow. So we’re taking a break from our simulated games, and today, here’s a game from Cubs history that you can game-thread and comment as if it were happening live.

There have been many famous Cubs games shown by national networks while baseball is shut down — World Series games from 2016, no-hitters, the Sandberg Game, the Kerry Wood 20-K game — but what about other games that were memorable or important at the time, but have perhaps been forgotten?

That’s what I am trying to do in this series — flash back to random Cubs games that were fun to watch, had something notable happen, but aren’t the games played over and over on national channels.

The game I chose for today is one that’s very important in franchise history. The date shown on the YouTube link should give you a clue, and there’s another in the photo above.

Here’s how this is going to work. In each of these threads I will post a YouTube link to the game in question. In order for everyone to be able to comment in “real time” about the game, you will have to press “play” on the YouTube page at exactly the same time. I’m posting these 30 minutes before that time, which will be exactly 3:00:00 p.m. Central time.

You should be able to sync this with the clock on your phone or computer. If you wind up off by a few seconds just hit “pause” on the YT page while you catch up, or fast forward a few seconds. For this to work properly you’ll have to sit while the “commercial break in progress” screen passes by, so this can operate in more or less “real time.” You will have to let any ad that appears before the game starts roll by before you press “play.” Also, the “stay tuned, the game will begin shortly” screen lasts about 25 seconds before video actually begins. Everyone should start from 0:00 to make sure you’re all synced.

Hope that makes sense.

Now, once you know the date of the game (which is, in this case, right on the YouTube link) you can obviously look up what happens, but it’s more fun if you don’t and just let the game unfold as if it were live. Your clue to what happens in this game is in the photo at the top of this post.

We’ll do this for every off day in 2020 on the Cubs’ original schedule. Those dates are (after today):

June 11
June 12
June 15
June 22
July 6
July 9
July 22
August 10
August 13
August 24
September 3
September 21
September 24

You’ll note that I left the All-Star break dates (July 13-16) off of that list. I’ll figure out what to do with those later. Also, if actual baseball resumes at any point this year, obviously I’ll switch back to covering that instead of simulations, etc.

I’m going to try to pick games that last three hours or less, just because that would seem to fill people’s afternoons from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. CT pretty well and work in other time zones as well. This one runs a bit more than three hours, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Here is the YouTube link for today’s game. It’s also embedded below. Enjoy, and discuss amongst yourselves.