LOS ANGELES – Luck is an unseemly word in baseball. It’s almost a suggestion that what occurred was unearned or undeserved. The Cubs earned last season’s World Series, but along the way, little bounces here and there – luck, perhaps – helped them reach their goal. And in baseball, as the saying goes, you make your own luck.
Anthony Rendon’s error in Game 1 of the NLDS was a bit of luck. That the Cubs capitalized on it was not. In the regular season, Anthony Rizzo’s late-inning, Game 3 bloop single would be considered luck. In the postseason, it’s clutch.