CHICAGO – Alex Bregman could not help but smile as he rounded third base and headed home for the third time on Monday night. Maybe the home run came off a looping pitch from a position player – Andrew Vaughn of the Brewers, in this case – but the shot into the sea of delirious fans in Wrigley Field’s left-field bleachers counted all the same.
The blast from Bregman in the eighth inning of a 17-3 romp over the Cubs’ rivals from Milwaukee served as an exclamation point to cap off a record-breaking evening in the power department. The North Siders set a single-game franchise record with nine home runs and established a National League mark for a calendar month with 62 homers in August.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Bregman said.
Bregman led the charge with three home runs – his second career three-homer game, with both coming a few weeks apart – but had plenty of company. Tyrone Taylor and Nico Hoerner went back to back in the first. Seiya Suzuki went back to back with Bregman in the fourth. Carson Kelly got in on the action, along with Matt Shaw and Michael Conforto.
It was an emphatic win that came as the NL Wild Card-leading Cubs try to pull back into the NL Central race with the Brewers. Milwaukee still holds a seven-game lead over Chicago, but the teams are in the midst of seven games against each other in a 10-day span. It is a chance for the Cubs to make things interesting.
“You could kind of feel their energy,” said Cubs starter Clay Holmes, who went six shutout innings. “After a couple series that we lost, you could tell that the position-player group really wanted to come out strong. And you can feel that. To be able to put a zero up there in the first and kind of let them do their thing was nice.”
Go figure that Pete Crow-Armstrong, who ripped five homers in the previous two games, was not one of the players to go yard in the win. Five blasts came against Brewers lefty Kyle Harrison, while Vaughn (primarily a first baseman) surrendered the last three as he covered the final two frames of the blowout for Milwaukee.
“The position-player stuff gets a little ridiculous at the end there, honestly,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “That’s great we set a record. And the guys aren’t going to stop hitting. Guys are not going to stop hitting. They’re going to take advantage of it, and they should. They absolutely should. We’ll take it.”
In the process, the Cubs piled up an incredible list of feats:
• Prior to Monday night, Bregman also had a three-homer game on Aug. 12. The Cubs also saw Crow-Armstrong (Saturday) and Dansby Swanson (July 1) enjoy a three-homer performance this year. The Cubs have joined the 2001 Brewers, 1956 Reds and 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers as the only teams in MLB history with four individual three-homer games in one season.
• Bregman joined Sammy Sosa (three times in 2001), Dave Kingman (twice in 1979) and Aramis Ramirez (twice in 2004) as the only Cubs players since at least 1900 with multiple three-homer games in the same season. Bregman and Sosa (August of ‘01) are the only players in Cubs history to have multiple three-homer games in a calendar month.
• The Cubs (this August), Pirates (June of 2022) and Braves (September of 2020) are the only teams to have three individual three-homer games in a calendar month. Besides Sosa and Bregman, other players with multiple three-homer games in a month include Adam Duvall (September ‘20), Carlos Delgado (April ‘01), Doug DeCinces (August 1982), Willie Stargell (April ‘71) and Johnny Mize (July ‘38).
• The nine homers not only set a single-game record for the Cubs – topping the eight-homer days on July 1 this season and July 4, 2025 – but were tied for the second-most in a game in MLB history. Only the Blue Jays have had more blasts in one ballgame, going deep 10 times on Sept. 14, 1987.
• The 62 home runs in August by the Cubs surpassed the 2023 Braves (61 in June) for the NL record for a calendar month. Only the 2019 Yankees (74 in August) have had more homers in a calendar month in MLB history.
• Crow-Armstrong (15 homers) and Bregman (12) are only the third pair of teammates to have at least 12 homers in the same calendar month, joining Iván Rodríguez and Rafael Palmeiro (August ‘99 with Texas) and Yankees legends Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (July 1961 and June ‘60).
• The Cubs joined the 2025 Yankees, 2019 Twins and 2005 Rangers as the only teams in MLB history with two games in a season featuring at least eight home runs.
It was enough to make your head spin.
“It was a good month, just driving the baseball,” Bregman said. “The quality of the at-bat in the second half, it’s been super consistent up and down the lineup. And it’s been tough on opposing teams.”