That’s how it’s done. Finally, after nearly forty games — a quarter of the season — the Rangers put it together. The offense clicked. The pitching dominated. The defense…well, okay, let’s not get too carried away about this game.

It started out looking like it was going to be another one of those Jack Leiter cave-ins. It took him more than 20 pitches to get through the first, but he did, stranding two runners. The Rangers, as usual at home, went out meekly in the first.

Leiter put the first two Cubs on in the second. You could tell something strange was happening, though. The Cubs were acting like the Rangers, flailing with runners in scoring position, squandering opportunities. The Rangers were about to turn into the Cubs.

Josh Jung led off the second with a home run. Evan Carter walked. Joc Pederson got a hit. Read that last sentence again, it doesn’t get printed much. Joc Pederson got a hit. So did Alejandro Osuna, which happens quite often. Suddenly, the Rangers were up 2-0. 

In the fourth, Joc Pederson got another hit. This one a double the drove in a run. Osuna singled him in. 

If Pederson getting two hits wasn’t a sign of the Apocalypse or something, Justin Foscue leading off the bottom of the fifth with his first major league home run was.

Foscue and Pederson both suffered through franchise-worse hitless streaks of over 40 at-bats while in Rangers uniforms. And now, here they were, hitting. Contributing. Hitting. And the Cubs, the team that has scored the most runs per game this season, was being shut out.

In the end, the Ranger won 6-0, shutting out the Cubs and stopping their ten-game winning streak. It was like one of those Freaky Friday movies where they switch bodies and the kid is the parent and the parent is the kid.

Freaky Saturday.

*****