With his infamous 2016 World Series Game 7 rain delay clubhouse speech now a part of baseball lore, Cubs RF Jason Heyward decided to once again rally the team during Thursday’s weather postponed NL Wild Card Game 2 against the Marlins.
It might not have the same impact of the speech he gave nearly four years ago.
“It’s one thing if the delay is only 17 minutes and it’s the World Series,” said first baseman Anthony Rizzo, “but a 24-hour delay during the Wild Card round is just not the same.”
Heyward sprung into action shortly after word spread about an hour before 1 p.m.’s first pitch Thursday that the game was to be postponed until Friday afternoon due to the threat of continued rainstorms through the afternoon and evening.
“You guys, I’ve got this shit,” said Heyward, shortly after Thursday’s game was called. “Everyone meet in the clubhouse in five minutes. We’ve got to get our minds right.”
Heyward then proceeded to unleash an energetic, expletive-filled rant about the team needing to wake their sleeping bats and “get their shit together.”
After about 10 minutes, though, he started losing steam. One insider said players were soon “kind of just looking at each other, wondering what they should do next.”
Eventually Kyle Schwarber jumped in, giving an equally energetic expletive-laced pep talk that reportedly had his teammates just as pumped up as Heyward’s, but he also ran out of things to say.
One by one, each Cubs player gave their turn at rallying his teammates, including Yu Darvish who pledged he would fight for the Cubs until “イタチの最後っ屁” which translates to “a weasel’s last fart.”
By the time each player had spoken, it was only 2:30 in the afternoon, a full 22 and a half hours until Friday’s reschedulement. Still, Heyward refused to let his teammates leave. Word is he’s forcing them to spend the night in the clubhouse at Wrigley Field.
“We’ve officially run out of things to talk about,” said one player/former Rookie of the Year and MVP on the condition of anonymity. “We’re all just staring at our phones and asking each other if we can borrow a charger when our batteries get less than 10 percent. I’ve gotten back into Angry Birds, which I guess is kind of cool.”
Asked if he cared about a night away from home, the anonymous player replied: “I don’t give a shit, how about that?”
