Cubs-Diamondbacks instant classic cracks top 5 of craziest games at Wrigley Field
So maybe you've heard of this ballpark named Wrigley Field. It's been around a while … by which we mean since the Woodrow Wilson administration.
If you count the postseason, those Chicago Cubs have played more than 8,500 baseball games at Wrigley. Which feels like a lot.
So when we tell you that a game there from the past week ranks with the all-time Wrigley classics, you should drop what you're doing (unless what you're doing is reading this column) and jolt to attention.
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That game was last Friday, when the Cubs gave up 10 runs to Arizona in one inning … and then won anyway (13-11). But that doesn't even begin to capture this nutty game. (Here's the box score.)
'Your brain gets a little mushy when you're doing games like that,' said Jim Deshaies, the Cubs' awesome color analyst for Marquee Sports Network. 'When it's finally done, you're like: 'What the hell happened?''
Oh, we'll get to what the hell happened in a moment. But first …
Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we had a question: Is it possible this game deserves a place on the official list of the all-time wildest games ever played at Wrigley?
Ready for the answer — from the man most capable of answering it, Ed Hartig, the Cubs' team historian? That would be … yes!
Because Ed Hartig is a legend, he agreed to furnish us with his rankings of …
1. The 23-22 game — What a game. Phillies 23, Cubs 22 in 10 innings, on May 17, 1979. And what's so crazy about that game? Haha. Oh, just this stuff, Hartig said:
Only those 45 runs … 50 hits … 15 walks … somebody scoring in eight of the 10 innings … 13 combined runs in the first inning … three half-innings with at least six runs scored … 11 home runs … six players with at least four RBIs … and the winning run scoring on a 10th-inning homer involving two Hall of Famers, Mike Schmidt off Bruce Sutter. Whew!
2. The 26-23 game — This was regarded as the Wrigley all-timer until that 23-22 game came along. It was Cubs 26, Phillies 23 on Aug. 25, 1922. And what was so crazy about that other Cubs-Phillies classic? That, Hartig said, would be this:
Did you notice that adds up to 49 runs — making it merely the highest-scoring game in MLB history … and 51 hits … nine errors … 21 walks … the Cubs putting up innings of 10 and 14 runs to take a 25-6 lead … and then the Phillies scoring 14 runs over the last two innings and loading the bases before making the final out. Oh, and also … the same two teams played the next day and were 0-0 after 10 innings, because … baseball!
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3. Last Friday's Cubs-Diamondbacks game! Yes! More on this all-timer coming right up.
4. The 16-15 game — It's been almost half a century since this one: Cubs 16, Reds 15, in 13 innings, on July 28, 1977. So what was so crazy about that? Oh, man. How 'bout all this, Hartig said:
Ten runs combined in the first inning … 18 runs in the first three innings … bonus craziness points when the Cubs pinch hit for their shortstop (Iván DeJesús) with an outfielder (José Cardenal) in the ninth, meaning Cardenal had to keep switching between second and short depending on who was batting … after which another outfielder, Bobby Murcer, replaced Cardenal and did the same thing for four more innings … and then the infielder they were switching with, Dave Rosello, made an error in the 12th inning that gave the Reds the lead … only to have (yep) Rosello win it with a 13th-inning single that drove in (why not) a pitcher (Rick Reuschel) for the wild finale.
5. The 12-11 game — This was the previous most recent classic: Cubs 12, Astros 11, in 11 innings, on Sept. 28, 1995. And how'd it make this list? Here's how, Hartig said:
Possibly because the Cubs became the first team in history to trail in a game six times and still win. … Seriously. … They trailed by scores of 1-0 (in the first inning), 6-5 (in the sixth), 7-6 (in the seventh), 9-7 (in the eighth), 10-9 (in the 10th) and 11-10 (in the 11th) … and they won. Oh, and also … the two teams combined to use 45 players – 18 of them pitchers.
Hartig also furnished us with an Honorable Mention list. Here come the four he left off the top-five list: Sept. 28, 1930 (Cubs trail Reds, 9-0, and win, 13-11) … April 30, 1949 (the legendary 'inside-the-glove' home run in which the tying and winning runs score while Andy Pafko argues with the ump that he just made a game-ending catch) … April 17, 1986 (Cubs blow a 12-1 lead to the Phillies and Mike Schmidt hits four homers) … Aug. 29, 1989 (Cubs trail, 9-0, again and win).
So that's a lot of epic Wrigley nuttiness. But that's just the pregame show. Now it's time for …
1. The 10-run inning! Here we go. … No team had scored 10 runs in an inning all season. … The Cubs hadn't allowed 10-plus in an inning since Aug. 13, 2021. That was 552 games ago. … The Diamondbacks had scored 10-plus in an inning once in the 1,053 games they'd played since the start of the 2018 season. … And then they erupted for 10 in the eighth, to take the lead, at the national historical baseball monument known as Wrigley Field … and they lost. Which seems kinda rare. So …
2. Who the heck scores 10 in an inning and doesn't even win? Two dozen franchises in the modern era have never known what that feels like — to spin off a 10-run inning and lose. Oh, wait. Make that 23 franchises … thanks to the Diamondbacks.
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Before last Friday, only two teams had done that in the past 92 seasons — the Royals (10 in the first against Cleveland on Aug. 23, 2006) and the Pirates (10 in the first in Philadelphia on June 8, 1989, aka the Jim Rooker 'If We Don't Win I'll Walk Back to Pittsburgh' Game).
Thanks to the great Sarah Langs of MLB.com for reminding us that three of the other four teams to do this did it in 1912 — the Yankees (on May 3 against the A's), the Braves (June 20, against the Giants) and Reds (Sept. 26, 1912, against the Cubs). And yes, that means the Cubs are the only team in the modern era to give up 10 in an inning twice and still win! But there's more because …
3. The D-Backs scored 10 in an inning and didn't even make it through that inning with the lead! This inning had been over for about 14 seconds when I heard from loyal reader Brian Coulter. He said he was 'looking forward' to me blowing up my life to look up the last time a team did this seemingly impossible thing. So yeah, I did that.
Turns out only one other team in the modern era has ever scored 10-plus runs in an inning to take the lead — and then gave back that lead in the bottom of that inning. The other: Dick Hoblitzell's 1912 Reds. They were down, 9-0, against (yep, the Cubs) entering the ninth … then scored 10 to take the lead, 10-9 … then coughed up two runs in the bottom of the ninth … on four walks and a hit batter!
But meanwhile, back here in 2025, the Cubs fired off seven hits in the bottom of the eighth, scored six times and miraculously turned this into the highest-scoring inning (by two teams) in the history of Wrigley Field … which as we've mentioned, has been around a while. Except that's still not all, because …
4. These teams scored 21 runs in an inning and a half! Twelve teams haven't played a whole game all season in which the two teams playing put up 21 runs (or more) … and the Cubs and D-Backs scored 21 just in an inning and a half. As in: five for the Cubs in the bottom of the seventh, 10 for Arizona in the top of the eighth and six more for the Cubs in the bottom of the eighth.
So how'd that happen? Would you believe that over those three half-innings, the two teams combined to go 20-for-29 (.690) with five homers … because as Deshaies would put it, 'It's really tough to hit in the major leagues … until it's not.'
According to loyal reader/friend of the column Eric Orns, there had been only three other games on record in which 21 runs were scored in an inning and a half — but one of them doesn't fit, because the 2023 Angels scored 21 by themselves. The other two were the Phillies and Pirates (7-9-6) on April 16, 1953, and the Indians and Red Sox (13-6-3) on April 10, 1977.
But was any of that even the Weird and Wild part? As our friends from STATS Perform reported, in just those three half-innings, the two teams combined for … ready for all this? … a cycle, a home run cycle (slam, three-run, two-run, solo), six total homers, two slams and at least five runs in three half-innings. So what's so Weird and Wild about that? Just that …
There had never been a game in history where all of those things happened in the whole game … and then the Cubs and Diamondbacks did all that in an inning and a half!
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Un-be-freaking-lievable. But it was even more unbelievable because …
5. Before all that, this was just a 'normal' 2-1 game in the seventh! And you just don't see a 2-1 contest transform itself into a game this wacky after the seventh inning, friends. According to Orns, this was only the second time in the past century that a game was that low-scoring that late … and wound up with both teams scoring at least 10 runs.
And the only other time happened as recently as 65 years ago! In that one, Reno Bertoia's Washington Senators took a 1-0 lead into the eighth against Minnie Miñoso's White Sox on Aug. 30, 1960 … and then it turned into an 11-10 game. But it took seven runs in the 10th to make that happen. So we're ruling: That wasn't this!
Wow. Deep breath. What. A. Game. Digested it all yet? Cool. Now here's the question I asked Jim Deshaies: Could you please explain baseball?
DESHAIES: 'Can anyone? You know better than anyone that you cannot. There's no explaining this.'
WEIRD AND WILD: 'So all those words I write every week about this stuff are just a waste of time?'
DESHAIES: 'No, I think it just continues to make the point — that you can't explain baseball.'
W&W: 'So at what point during that game did you realize I was going to call you?
DESHAIES: 'I would say, somewhere in the midst of that. After they got the 10 runs and then the Cubs started coming back, I said: This is a Jayson Stark moment. It's absolutely a Jayson moment.'
W&W: 'OK then. Here I am. You're welcome!'
And also … how amazing a sport is …
Baseball!
(Top photo of Seiya Suzuki celebrating an eighth-inning home run against the Diamondbacks on April 18: Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
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