Redemptions for Pete Crow-Armstrong, Dansby Swanson as Cubs return to walk-off ways: ‘This is who we are’

The Cubs were heading for rock bottom Thursday night.

It sure looked like an ugly stretch was about to get uglier, with Pete Crow-Armstrong making a rare fielding gaffe in center and Shota Imanaga tagged for four home runs.

A loss would have taken them to last place in the NL Central, by the smallest of percentage points, an unthinkable landing spot for a team with championship-level expectations.

But then, joy.

The Cubs rallied from a 6-1 deficit to score a comeback 7-6 win, walking off the A’s and avoiding a sweep at Wrigley Field.

“Whenever you get to run and jump around like little kids,” Crow-Armstrong said, “it’s always a blast.”

Who else but Crow-Armstrong would be in the middle of everything?

After he lost a fly ball that dropped behind him and went for an inside-the-park home run – a play that seemed to represent everything that’s gone wrong for the Cubs the last few weeks – he immediately found redemption with a homer of his own.

“The first time it’s happened to me here. Pretty helpless feeling,” Crow-Armstrong said of the defensive miscue. “But it’s about moving on. There’s not much you can do about that except hope you see it next time.

“In the past, I might have dwelled on that, and that always ends up affecting how you go about the rest of your day. People having my back, me not hiding from the next at-bat, I’m growing up a little bit and proud of that.”

Three innings later, Crow-Armstrong also delivered the game-winning knock, an RBI single that capped a conga line of a ninth inning that saw a previously sputtering Cubs offense score four runs on seven hits.

“We’ve stayed in the fight all year. And we’ve been fighting through these last couple weeks,” Crow-Amrstrong said. “This kind of stuff is exactly what we’re capable of.”

The Cubs didn’t necessarily view Thursday’s outcome as a way to rinse the bad taste of a 5-18 stretch from their mouths but rather as a reminder that, hey, this team can be pretty good.

This kind of thing was commonplace earlier in the campaign, with the Cubs winning six of their first 37 games in walk-off fashion. The previous one came May 6. Two days after that, the Cubs were 15 games north of even on a 10-game winning streak. And then?

Well, let’s just say the Cubs would like this to be their normal once again.

“This is who we are,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “For the last three weeks, we’ve not been that. So for everyone to get [to see], ‘Hey, this is what we’ve been talking about, this is what we’ve been working toward, this is what this group is capable of,’ to have that show up in so many different ways, from so many different guys in the lineup … that’s what this group is about.

“For us to come through and get that win is not only something we can build off of but the reminder that this is who we are. That’s so important when times are like this.”

Swanson, who’s been the biggest target for frustrated fan complaints thanks to the .183 batting average he carried into Thursday, got his own moment of redemption, delivering a two-out RBI single that tied the game in the ninth.

Wrigley went nuts, but no one was going crazier than Swanson, who was screaming and pumping his fist at first base, perhaps celebrating a monkey-free back?

“I’m most happy for Dansby, obviously,” manager Craig Counsell said. “It’s been rough. But he came up big, and it was a huge hit and a really good at-bat.

“He’s fired up we won, but I think there was a little bit of that other thing in there, too, no doubt about it.”

Swanson was happy, too, that he was trusted to deliver in that situation, not pinch hit for like he was late in Tuesday’s game.

“No,” Counsell said, asked if he considered making a move. “It was Dansby’s at-bat.”

With so many Cubs redeemed Thursday night, is this the end of it? Have the Cubs cathartically put this sorry stretch behind them and turned their season around?

“You never know,” Crow-Armstrong said. “You’ve just got to wait and see.”

“That’s too big a statement for me. We’ve got to come and play a game tomorrow,” manager Counsell said. “Hopefully we tell that story in October.”