Folks are trained to pay attention to the weather at Wrigley Field.
They can tell you how the Cubs are faring this season when the wind blows out (7-1).
They can tell you how they do when the wind blows in (4-4).
They can even tell you how they do in a crosswind, whether it arrives from the southeast or northwest (3-0).
And after Monday night, they can tell you what happens when a rainbow, mimicking the high arc of a home run by Seiya Suzuki, materializes beyond the right-field wall: The Cubs win, with Michael Conforto’s pinch-hit homer giving them a walk-off, 5-4 triumph over the Reds as rare and precious and beautiful as the splendor in the sky.
Conforto has played 11 seasons in the big leagues, not counting 2022, which he missed after shoulder surgery. He has played in 1,168 games. He has had 3,844 at-bats. He is 33 — 12 years removed from when he was a first-round draft choice of the Mets, much closer to the end of his career than the beginning.
Until Monday night, he never had hit a walk-off home run.
“In T-ball? I might’ve had a couple,” he said.
This was not T-ball. This was the bottom of the ninth in a game the Cubs had just tied. Pete Crow-Armstrong ran as fast as Golden Tempo in the Kentucky Derby going to third when Reds center fielder Dane Myers was unable to hold on to his drive into the ivy, the ball becoming dislodged as Myers hit the wall. Crow-Armstrong scored standing up when Nico Hoerner lined to left for a sacrifice fly.
“Nico doing what Nico does,” skipper Craig Counsell said. “Just getting the run in. There’s a pretty high probability he’s going to do it.”
The next batter due to hit was Matt Shaw, who had entered as a pinch runner for Moises Ballesteros in the eighth. Counsell had waited to see how the inning unfolded before electing to have Conforto bat. He ran the count to 3-2 on Reds closer Emilio Pagan, then launched a drive into the left-center-field seats while Counsell mouthed “Wow,” caught by television cameras.
“I was just really thinking, I mean, how hard?” Counsell said. “Like, when you go and ask somebody to pinch-hit there, and they haven’t been playing much, and how difficult an at-bat that was. Before the home run, he puts together a good at-bat just to get to that pitch. [I] respect how hard that at-bat is, and to deliver in that situation is just really hard to do and should make you enjoy it even more.”
Armstrong, told this was Conforto’s first walk-off home run after so much time, mentioned how good Conforto was to him when he was a minor-leaguer with the Mets and Conforto was one of the established players.
“It’s really hard to sit on the bench for 8 ‰ innings, to sit on the bench that long and find any sort of, like, sexy feeling that we like to feel as hitters. [Pagan is] a pretty good major-league closer, and that’s just an incredible at-bat.”
Crow-Armstrong loved the intensity of the Wrigley crowd in early May.
“This was a pretty cool Monday, man,” he said. “I’m just happy for [Conforto], man. I mean, we’ve never been all that close, but now that he’s here, getting to appreciate the work they do and what they bring to the clubhouse every day, it’s just amazing.”
The Cubs, playing in front of a crowd of 32,997 that sat through a 100-minute rain delay, won their sixth in a row and their 12th in a row at Wrigley, their longest home winning streak since winning 14 straight in 2008.
Suzuki hit a 455-foot, three-run homer in the fourth, his second-longest since coming to the Cubs — but runner-up to the blow that Conforto delivered to walk off the Reds.
