Hoerner's defense vs. Dodgers so impressive, he simply has to laugh

LOS ANGELES -- Nico Hoerner broke character. Typically stoic on a baseball field, the Cubs’ second baseman could not help himself. He smiled wide and kept on smiling. Even he had to laugh a little at the acrobatics he pulled off on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

“I was just enjoying the absurdity of the play in the moment,” Hoerner said.

The setting was the seventh inning of the Cubs’ 6-4 comeback win over the Dodgers. The North Siders had not yet completed their rally and every out was critical for lefty Ryan Rolison, working in his second of three innings in an important relief appearance to help save Chicago’s battered bullpen.

With Los Angeles still holding a 4-3 edge in the game, Hyeseong Kim sent an 0-1 curveball from Rolison sharply to the right side. Cubs first baseman Michael Busch made a backhanded stab at the ball, which struck his glove and then shot into the air. From the dirt, Busch looked back to see Hoerner racing behind him.

“He’s very sure-handed,” Hoerner said of Busch. “So, I was surprised it got by him. But honestly, it took a pretty fortunate bounce.”

Maybe, but what happened next was nonetheless jaw-dropping.

Hoerner left his feet and reached up, plucking the baseball from the air with his bare right hand. At the same time, Rolison was hustling off the mound to cover first base, just in case. The reliever still had several steps to go by the time Hoerner gripped the ball, so the second baseman landed and fired in anticipation of Rolison’s arrival.

Rolison got there in time to catch the ball and step on the base just ahead of Kim, as the Dodger Stadium crowd let out a mix of an awed response and groans. And as he backpedaled into the right-field grass following his throw, Hoerner just smiled and laughed. It was absurd, indeed.

Hoerner called it a “perfect storm” of things coming together.

“A lot of things in defense you kind of picture in your head beforehand,” Hoerner said. “That’s not a play where I’ve ever really had anything similar to, which is why our sport is fun, because there’s so much randomness to it and things that pop up out of nowhere.

“Great play by Rolison even being there in the first place. So much had to link up for that to be possible.”

Hoerner’s teammates enjoyed seeing his own reaction to the moment.

“That was kind of a silly play,” Cubs starter Jameson Taillon said. “I can always tell when Nico likes a play. He’s pretty hard on himself and he’s pretty process-oriented. It’s hard to read his emotions.

“But every once in a while he'll show you that he’s having fun out there and he enjoyed that play. That was one I’m guessing he really liked. It was kind of a freestyle play, which is cool.”

Earlier in the seventh inning, Hoerner also teamed up with right fielder Seiya Suzuki on a relay that cut down Andy Pages at third base on a would-be triple. The inning then ended with Cubs catcher Carson Kelly successfully challenging a two-strike ball call on Shohei Ohtani, resulting in an overturned ruling and crucial strikeout.

Escaping that frame unscathed set the stage for Alex Bregman’s game-tying homer in the eighth and Dansby Swanson’s go-ahead, two-run blast in the ninth. Swanson ended with four RBIs in the win and also made a diving catch up the middle to rob Kyle Tucker of a hit.

Swanson thought his dive was going to get more love -- until Hoerner’s heroics.

“I was kind of giving him a hard time,” Swanson said. “Like, ‘Man, I actually thought I might’ve had the best one of the day, and then you did that.’”

The smile said it all.

“Neither of us really celebrate plays all that often,” Swanson said. “That’s just what we do. But Nico, when he reacts the way he does, it just brings a lot of joy to my heart. It’s like he knows how sick it was. You know?”