CHICAGO -- The way that Nationals center fielder Jacob Young slowly drifted back, it was not clear initially if Alex Bregman was about to have his milestone homer. The Wrigley Field crowd buzzed in anticipation and then the winds over the old ballpark took care of the rest.
In the fourth inning of Sunday’s 6-3 loss to the Nationals, Bregman’s shot to center off Washington’s Jake Irvin kept carrying and carrying, falling into the sea of fans in the bleacher seats for his first career home run for the Cubs. The crowd erupted and Bregman stuck out his tongue as he headed around third and faced his new teammates in the third-base dugout.
Bregman was not done, either.
The Cubs’ big offseason addition followed that first homer up with a solo home run in the eighth inning, trying to spark a rally. The second shot rocketed to right-center for an opposite-field blast off Nationals righty Cionel Pérez and marked the eighth multihomer game of Bregman's career.
Bregman’s first two blasts in the blue pinstripes come after the star third baseman signed a five-year, $175 million contract in free agency over the winter to join the North Siders.
The first homer came off a pitcher in Irvin that Bregman had never faced prior to Sunday’s meeting, and the shot off a 2-2 cutter in the heart of the zone ended the righty’s no-hit run at 10 batters.
Then, as Bregman was reaching the end of the high fives and back slaps in the Cubs’ dugout, Ian Happ got in on the action, as well. Happ slashed an Irvin pitch to left, sending a low liner into the basket above the bricks for back-to-back blasts that cut Washington’s lead to 3-2 in the fourth.
On Opening Day on Thursday, Happ had a would-be homer pushed back by a violent wind that robbed it of 113 projected feet of distance, according to Statcast’s Weather Applied Metrics database. That flyout was an extreme example of how unfriendly Wrigley can be for hitters at times. For Bregman, however, his first homer for the Cubs was blown out an extra 25 feet, per Statcast. The Friendly Confines, indeed.