CROW-ARMSTRONG IS A MOUTHFUL: HE SAVES THE CUBS, CHICAGO AND BASEBALL
He sat with his crying father when the Cubs won in 2016, only to bring life to Wrigleyville, a city and a sport with sensational defense and a power bat that will lead to his first All-Star Game start
Mark Twain hasn’t resurfaced. Or Bill Walton. They might imagine a baseball player who colors his hair when he prefers, drops an earring in his left lobe, examines Wrigley Field with an animated gaze, delivers the most inspired defense of any center fielder in our memory and just smashed his 19th home run against the right-field scoreboard, 452 feet from home plate, while tapping his heart for delirious Chicagoans.
“Season ends today, PCA is your MVP,” teammate Justin Steele tweeted. “Get over it.”
PCA? Is that some extended version of the CTA, the local transit authority? A law firm that takes ambulance money? The Plumbers and Contractors Association? The Porsche Club of America? Pete Crow-Armstrong sounds like the lead singer of the Lumineers, but he is not a folkie. In the age of the double-barreled surname, as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander stampedes an NBA title, PCA is taking over Major League Baseball with a magnetism that electrifies a city that cannot exist normally without a sports superhero representing the realm. Chicago needs him like it needed the 1985 Bears and Michael Jordan.
Is it too early to make such numbing suggestions? Doesn’t he play for the Cubs, who have won only one World Series in 117 years? Well, he covers more ground than a John Deere tractor. He swings with such ferocity, his latest home run departed the Friendly Confines with an exit velocity of 111.5 mph, which would have alienized anyone who visited the park in 1914. All you need to know about PCA is that his father, who grew up near Wrigley in a suburb called Naperville, cried as his son sat with him when the Cubs finally won in 2016. Matt Armstrong was a diehard fan and remained that way in southern California, where he and his wife, Ashley Crow, raised Pete as a high-school star.
They are Hollywood people, with his mother playing Billy Heywood’s mom in “Little Big League, when a 12-year-old boy becomes the owner of the Minnesota Twins. Turns out they’ve created a son already in a movie-star existence. Crow-Armstrong might compete for the MVP award, in a league with Shohei Ohtani, but with 19 homers, 58 runs batted in and 23 stolen bases, he’ll start the All-Star Game with teammate Kyle Tucker and has brought a transcendent surge to the National League’s best team. When you visit the city, the Jordan statue can wait. You must see PCA, who hears the crowd’s daily “MVP” chants in his sleep. He is fifth in the league in home runs. His Outs Above Average metric is 12, first in the majors.
“That’s the best right there. It’s so personable and just feels super real and cool,” Crow-Armstrong said of the Wrigley roars. “Those moments are the ones that I really need to slow down in, and those are important to appreciate. That was my first time really getting those kind of chants. Yeah, I definitely tried soaking it in, but that was very, very cool.”
“That’s why we come to the ballpark, to see things like that, to see great players do amazing things,” said his manager Craig Counsell.
“An aircraft carrier,” teammate Dansby Swanson calls him.
His arrival in Cubdom contradicts what often happens in this organization. Jed Hoyer, the president of baseball operations, was trying to ship away one of four stars from once-glorious 2016: Javier Baez. The acting GM of the New York Mets, Zack Scott, had no faith in Crow-Armstrong’s power and preferred to send him to the Cubs over starting pitcher Matt Allan. “Loved the defense, the makeup, the speed, had no doubt that that would be there. But did not see this level of power,” said Scott, who watched Allan suffer elbow operations and slip this season to Class A ball.
Scott no longer is with the Mets. Now he wants a piece of Hoyer’s contract when he extends this offseason with Cubs owner Tom Ricketts. The Crow-Armstrong swing ends all internal doubts about Hoyer. And if Ricketts starts spending big money as he should — an extension for Tucker, a multi-year deal for PCA — you’re looking at a team that should contend for years in a city tired of sports woe. Imagine being his father as Pete hears the same MVP chants he once heard for Sammy Sosa. Imagine how Pete, as a kid, used to root for the St. Louis Cardinals and Green Bay Packers just to spite his dad.
Matt told The Athletic: “I’m convinced there was some part of him that was — I won’t say sadistic, but he wanted to screw with me as much as possible. He was trolling me, at a very young age.”
Then came the World Series. “That was a moment I wouldn’t trade for anything,” Matt said. “I hugged him and I cried on his shoulder like a big old baby. Yeah, it would have been cool to be (in Cleveland) for Game 7. But to me, it couldn’t have gotten better. I would rather have had that moment with Pete than with 50,000 strangers.”
All is forgiven. A cult hero has become a megastar. “I just came in with a lot more comfort and confidence in myself, really, but I think the coolest part about that is what’s been asked of me hasn’t really changed,” Crow-Armstrong said. “No one’s asked me to hit the homers and do all this stuff. But the freedom I’ve been granted, the space to go play every day, I think that’s why we’re seeing that. My goal, and my job and what is asked of me is still just to go play a good center field.”
Is he as good as Willie Mays? You wonder. No ball gets past him. Every ball seems to wind up in his glove. “I missed out on some opportunities last year on some diving plays. I would say I’m executing better this year,” PCA said. “But, yeah, I feel like I’ve always known how to kind of fall and do that. It’s natural at this point.”
Natural is PCA.
As he prepares for an All-Star week that will blur his mind, Crow-Armstrong says he won’t compete in Home Run Derby. He doesn’t think his bat is ready; the statistics say otherwise. What’s wondrous is his humble approach. He has made a monstrous climb, to the widest opening in Chicago’s heart. At 23, he could stay until 2040.
Unlike other teams in that city, the Cubs have wanted distinction since Theo Epstein was in charge. Hoyer replaced him and somehow found PCA. Will he want to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers at some point, near his hometown of Sherman Oaks? He might, but his father might disown him.
And Ashley Crow? She might want to play his mother in the “Pete Crow-Armstrong Story.” It would be made for TV, streaming only.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.