Editor’s note: This story originally ran on May 6, 2018, for the 20th anniversary of Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game.
It was an otherwise nondescript day. In fact, it was forgettable. It was cloudy and raining, the cubs were hosting Houston Astros At the matinee in early May. School was still in session, so only 15,758 fans were in attendance. How many stayed to witness the history is unknown, as it rained throughout the day.
That didn’t stop 20-year-old Kerry Wood from putting on a magical performance. He posted the highest game score in baseball history, posting a pitching line of 9 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 20 K. He did it with a dynamic fastball and a slur that the Astros would call unattainable. Here are the memories of some of the people involved, including Wood. current cubs pitchers John Lester And kyle hendricks Add your two cents after watching highlights of possibly the greatest pitched game in the history of Wrigley Field. It was May 6, 1998 – 20 years ago.
Kerry Wood: “I remember having particularly low energy that day. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a day game or the sky was overcast. I was dragging my feet at the ballpark. It wasn’t jumping right away like I wanted. I was feeling sluggish.”
Cubs manager Jim Riggleman: “I remember he said that after the fact. His warm-up wasn’t very good.”
Astros second baseman Craig Biggio: “Our little league [scout] Said, ‘Hey, he’s got a good fastball, OK curve and be patient with him.’ We watched him warm up, and were like, ‘Okay, no big deal.’ Then the game started, and the kid put on his Superman costume, and the next thing you know, he knocked out 20 of us.
Wood: “I was all over the place in warm-ups. I was erratic. Every other pitch in the bullpen, I was getting another ball because I was throwing it on a screen or bouncing it. I didn’t throw a single strike. The first pitch of the game, it didn’t change. I hit [plate umpire] Jerry Miles in the mask. I didn’t realize it.”
Plate umpire Jerry Miles: “To this day, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me again. It’s the first pitch of the game, so things start going through my mind. ‘Is there something I should be paying attention to? Is there some bad blood? How do you get nervous on the first pitch? What the hell is going on here?'”
Wood: “I went 2-0 on Craig Biggio, then got kicked off the team. I totally surprised myself. I felt great after the first, but there was zero adrenaline rush.”
Biggio: “He had a nice, smooth delivery. The ball was electric. I can relate to that [Craig] Kimbrel. He’s got this ball where he throws it and it goes into the glove, and it’s heavy and tough and strong. He was on.”
John Lester: “In that game, it wasn’t a lot of long at-bats. You see a lot of swings and misses and takes, not a lot of foul balls. Nowadays, you know spin rates and all these things, that would have been plus-plus. That’s the biggest thing, the way those pitches broke.”
After four innings, Wood had eight strikeouts. An infield hit by Astros shortstop Ricky Gutierrez ruined any chance of a no-hitter, but by then, he was locked in and thinking the entire game.
Wood: “Bagwell’s second at-bat, I knew I was up 3-1, and I threw hook-hook and buckled him back-to-back. After that, I knew I had a chance to finish it.”
Meal: “He had everything working. He had a good hitting team that was just flabbergasted. They were stumbling on breaking stuff and couldn’t catch the fastball.”
Kyle Hendricks: “The movement on his pitches was unbelievable. What a thing that pitch was.” [the slurve]? I don’t know how you get over it. No clue. You can just see how much spin is being created. “Those guys didn’t have a chance.”
Biggio: “We didn’t have the technology that they have today. Now you know everything about a guy. What he throws, how much he throws and things like that. You have everything. And you can see your batsmen when the game is going on.”
Lester: “The only information you had at that time was confronting the person.”
Riggleman: “Somewhere around his 13th strikeout, [third-base coach] Tom Gamboa said, ‘Do you know how many strikeouts he has?’ This got interesting. …I didn’t know 20 was a record.”
Meal: “The weather got worse in the sixth. The ground crew did a good job.”
Wood: “My goal wasn’t to walk anybody. That’s what I heard throughout my minor league career and my short time in the big leagues: Just don’t walk anybody. In a 1-0 game, I was just focused on not putting the tying run on base.”
Biggio: “We’re one step away from tying the game, so we’re not thinking about strikeouts. But when you go out there, you see the fans throwing K’s, and you’re like, ‘Holy shoot, how many strikeouts does this guy have?’ You start counting them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… I think they ran out of K.
During one period, Wood hit five consecutive shots.
Wood: “With two strikes he probably thought I was trying to trick him with off-speed, so on a lot of those fastballs he wasn’t pulling the trigger, thinking about off-speed.”
Hendrix: “The fastball is obviously electric. It goes up in the zone. Some of these balls break lefty, it goes up and to him. The spin rate must have been incredible. It makes it more fun to watch, without all those stats on the screen.”
Biggio: “We had 102 wins that year. That wasn’t a weak lineup. They prepared us like we weren’t there.”
Riggleman: “It’s probably a little indictment of all the guys he’s managed over that span, I’m probably thinking 135 pitches for him. I’ve got to let him try to get this thing done.
“I didn’t want to take him out with men on base. That’s when you give the other club a lifeline. Maybe in the end of the inning. I’m not sure we ever got anybody on base.”
Wood: “Being from Texas and following Roger Clemens, I knew he had the major league record, but it’s not one of those numbers you think is attainable. … I didn’t know how hard I was throwing or how many pitches I threw. We didn’t have that back then.”
Riggleman: “There were games [in which] after six or seven [innings]He had 13 or 14 strikeouts, the pitch count was high, and we’d take him out. I will be scolded like crazy for taking him out. Later, when he got hurt, he said, ‘Oh, you hurt him too much.'”
Wood: “In the seventh inning, I thought the umpires might call it off for a moment because of the rain. And I knew at that point, if there was a delay, I was done. I remember thinking, ‘Don’t call off that game.'”
The Cubs scored an insurance run in the eighth, giving them a 2–0 lead. Wood had 18 strikeouts yet didn’t know he had a chance to set the record.
Wood: “I remember in the eighth inning I was thinking I just wanted to go back out there and finish it off. We scored another run, and I know I just wanted to finish the inning. A young player needs his team to score as much as possible.”
Lester: “It will be very difficult now. I don’t know if you’ll see 20 again in the future. With the bullpen and the expertise. … He was very unique. How big and long he was and how his levers worked. When you think of Kerry Wood, you think of someone special.”
Biggio: “He hit his spots and made his pitches that day. He was a man right there among the boys.”
Wood (on getting strikeout No. 20 against Derek Bell): “His first swing in that at-bat, I knew I could throw the rosin bag out there and he’d swing at it.”
Meal: “I was almost thinking about calling a no-hitter. The crew chief said he had 20 strikeouts. I had no idea. I wasn’t paying attention to the fans holding the K.”
Wood: “My fist-pump on the mound was about walking without walking and completing the game. I embraced [reliever] Terry Adams and say something to him, because before the game he said, ‘Hey rookie, why don’t you pitch more than five innings. You are killing us.’ But no one said anything about 20 strikeouts.
Meal: “[Umpire] Terry Tata was at first base. He says, ‘You had 19, I had one.’ Because he had put a phone on the check swing. That’s when I realized I was 20.
Wood: “Thirty seconds after it’s over, they bring me in front of the camera, and my hands are shaking. My adrenaline is rushing. That’s when I found out I scored 20 and tied the record. However, I had nothing to say.”
Biggio: “You’re disappointed you lost, but 20 punchouts is pretty amazing.”
Riggleman: “You meet a lot of people who say they were there that day, but it was a rainy day in May. It was probably 18,000.”
Hendrix: “And to do it at such a young age. He must have been in one of those areas once in a lifetime.”
Riggleman: “[Former Cubs] Billy Williams and Ron Santo were at Wood’s game that day and said it was even more impressive than Sandy Koufax’s perfect game. [against the Cubs in 1965]. They were also at the same place. You could make a case, as old as that stadium is, it could be the greatest game ever played there.”
