CHICAGO – As Pete Crow-Armstrong rounded first base and closed in on second, the Cubs center fielder gave a quick shake of the head. Even he looked like he did not believe the ball he just sent high over the right-field line was actually a home run.
After completing his home run trot in the fourth inning of Wednesday night's 8-6 win over the Rockies – one with a subdued high-five with third-base coach Quintin Berry and a hand raised to his teammates to hold off on celebrating – Crow-Armstrong waited to see what the replay would show.
Believe it: Crow-Armstrong homered for a third consecutive game.
A crew-chief review of the blast off Crow-Armstrong’s bat ended with the call being upheld as a home run. Replays showed the baseball falling just to the right of the yellow pole down Wrigley Field’s right-field line, where one zoomed-in angle showed the ball possibly grazing its outer edge.
“I couldn’t tell. It was so dark,” Crow-Armstrong said. “But then I went and watched it. Even the replay on the scoreboard was [bad]. I went back and watched on the iPad and it looked like it nicked it. I’ll take it.”
For Crow-Armstrong, it gave him a home run in three straight games for the first time in his career. He also has connected for four blasts in the past five games, in which he has the first three game-opening homers of his career. One of those leadoff shots came in San Francisco, while the other two were in each of the first two games in this series with the Rockies.
Crow-Armstrong’s homer came on a 2-2 sweeper from Rockies lefty Sean Sullivan, who also allowed seven runs in the second inning to the Cubs’ resurgent offense. Crow-Armstrong was not involved in that flurry, but his blast pushed Chicago to an 8-1 advantage in the fourth.
Crow-Armstrong’s season count is now up to 15 home runs, including eight in his scorching June showing. In fact, the Cubs star center fielder is currently tied with Hunter Goodman of the Rockies (who also homered in Wednesday's game), Nick Kurtz of the A’s and Jackson Chourio of the Brewers for the Major League lead for homers this month.
In 15 games in June, Crow-Armstrong is now hitting .406/.435/.906 with 14 extra-base hits, 11 RBIs, 12 runs and four steals. He already earned the National League’s Player of the Week honors for the first week of the month. In the opening game of this series, he also collected the 13th cycle in Cubs history, and the first achieved in reverse order for the franchise.
“The work that I’ve been doing all year, I think it’s just starting to come around a little bit,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Again, I don’t want to get too comfortable with any of that, because it’s been a month stretch of good baseball for me and I’ve got a lot more good baseball to play to help this team win.”