“No Quit” Chicago Cubs showcase resilience, tenacity in another big victory

The Chicago Cubs sit atop the NL Central Division, 5.5 games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers as of this writing.

A first-place team at this point of the season has to be good. But this Cubs team is something beyond good. Some may say that there’s something special about this squad.

Sunday’s extra-innings 3-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates highlights one key attribute of this 2025 team– on any given day, anyone on the 26-man roster can step up to be the hero.

In this last game of the 4-game series with a surprisingly tenacious Pirates crew, there were multiple heroes sprinkled around.

Chicago Cubs heroes, everywhere

Colin Rea pitched 6 solid innings and allowed only 2 earned runs, one start after one of his poorest outings of the year, and with an ugly 7.08 ERA in his last four starts.

The bullpen once again proved to be stingy, with Caleb Thielbar, Genesis Cabrera, Ryan Pressly, and Chris Flexen tossing one shutout inning apiece.

Nico Hoerner made a potential game-saving diving catch on a low line drive at second base in the tenth inning.

Seiya Suzuki and Dansby Swanson had an RBI apiece.

There were base-running heroics as well, with Ian Happ stealing a base in the opening inning that would eventually lead to the Cubs’ first run. In the bottom of the tenth, a Vidal Brujan/Kyle Tucker double steal would move the winning run to third and remove the possibility of an inning-killing double play.

Then, of course, Happ would deliver the walkoff hit in the bottom of the tenth to drive in the winning run.

Masters of their own destiny

The team-effort victory showcased the resilience of this team and served as a reinforcement of manager Craig Counsell’s philosophy that every little thing matters on the field.

“I think it hopefully highlights some of the things you try to emphasize everything matters,” Counsell told reporters after the game. “Grabbing an advantage wherever you can be the difference…It happens at every point in the game. I think that’s a really important thing.”

And the players are feeling this confidence boost in the fact that they are, ultimately, the masters of their own destiny and can drag victory from doldrums by simply executing to the best of their ability.

“It just gives you the confidence that you’re never out of the game,” Happ told media after Sunday’s win. “I think we felt that throughout the year. Whether we’re down early and we’re in a spot where we score some runs and come back or whether it’s a tight game all the way through and we feel like we have a chance to win at some point.

“And I think it just keeps reinstalling that confidence.”

The no-quit Cubs

The lesson reinforced in this Cubs team, over and over, is that even when they struggle, they can pull things together enough to pull off a win. That kind of confidence, coupled with the inherent versatility and tenacity of the roster, makes them virtually slump-proof, at least in theory.

“That’s why Jed [Hoyer] put this group together, knowing and understanding that we can overcome the different things that can be thrown our way,” Dansby Swanson told The Athletic back in late May. “For the first five weeks of the season, we were just banging it around, (but) we don’t have to score 10 runs to win every game. It’s finding ways to win games, regardless.”

So far, the Cubs have been able to talent their way through much of the season and scrap their way to wins when that talent hasn’t been enough.

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