Cubs verify Kyle Schwarber ball, will leave it on video board
A Cubs source confirmed to the Tribune that the monstrous Kyle Schwarber home run ball from Tuesday’s series-clinching win over the Cardinals landed on top of the right field video board.
A Cubs employee was sent to retrieve the ball Wednesday morning, and a source said the team verified it was the actual Schwarber ball through an MLB postseason watermark on it. It will be officially authenticated by MLB today.
The Cubs have returned it to its original location on top of the board and will leave it there until their postseason run has concluded.
The source said the Cubs will decide what to do with the ball after the season but wanted to leave it there for now as a memento of the Game 4 win. The Cubs are building a plexiglass case to preserve it from the elements, and will place it on top of the ball Wednesday afternoon.
A security guard will escort anyone going up to the top of the video board to service it so it won't be stolen. There will be no 24-hour security.
WLS-Ch. 7 first reported the ball was there after the Game 4 win, and it was later confirmed Wednesday by photos from a Tribune Co. employee who took before and after photos of the video board at the game.
The TBS cameras didn’t have any close-ups of the seventh-inning shot off Cardinals reliever Kevin Siegrist, which gave the Cubs a 6-4 lead.
Tom Comings, an enterprise architect for Tribune Publishing was taking photos of the board from section 538 in the right field upper-deck corner.
Comings took some shots of the board during the Harry Caray video between innings, and then came the Schwarber shot that was heard 'round Wrigleyville.
“We were watching and looking,” Comings said. “Nobody actually saw where it went at first and then instantly I said ‘There it is, on top of the scoreboard.' I put the picture on Twitter, and pictures from the seventh-inning stretch that clearly shows there was no ball up there then... It had to ricochet perfectly to land there.”
After the game, Comings and his friend asked a TBS cameraman if they had shown where the ball landed, assuming it was captured on TV. The cameraman, who was located in the upper deck behind home plate, zoomed in and told them he couldn’t see the top of the videoboard because his angle was too low.
Comings then went behind the Cubs’ dugout to join the celebration, and told an usher about the Schwarber ball. The usher referred him to the guest relations department.
“We showed them the picture and they got on radio and were verifying it was up there,” he said. “They told me they’d send someone to retrieve it, and then they called us back and gave us some stuff as thanks, a (Jon) Lester bobblehead, a thermos lunch bag and an Ernie Banks’ pin.”
Later Tuesday evening, sportscaster Mark Giangreco showed a video taken from a Ch. 7 chopper of a ball sitting on top of the board, which has a Budweiser sign on top of it. The ball was under the "i" in Budweiser.
Giangreco said they couldn’t verify whether it was the actual ball, but no other ball has been hit that far to right field. The video boards are in the first year of existence.
Some fans said on Twitter they thought they saw it clear the board, and everyone in the Cubs clubhouse assumed the ball went out of the park, including president Theo Epstein, pitcher Kyle Hendricks and catcher David Ross.
“Schwarber hit a ball out of the stadium,” Ross said.
But there was no conclusive evidence that the ball went on Sheffield Avenue, and no one was stepping up to claim the “Schwarbomb.”
WGN-Ch. 9 sent a helicopter to fly over the ballpark Wednesday morning and spotted the ball still sitting there under the Budweiser sign.
Now the ball is a piece of Cubs history, and will be there as a reminder to any pitchers the Cubs hitters face the rest of the postseason.
Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune
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