Javier Baez’s home run was the feel-good story of the Cubs’ NLDS clincher

CHICAGO — It would still need to fly 60 feet, 6 inches in and more than 400 feet out, but Javier Baez knew what he saw the moment the baseball left John Lackey’s hand.

“I saw a home run,” Baez said in the middle of a wild Wrigley Field party he had unofficially kicked off with one at-bat a few hours earlier. “There it was.”

And there it went. The 22-year-old shortstop approached his first at-bat on Tuesday expecting a first-pitch fastball from Lackey and that’s exactly what he got.

Though Lackey expertly located the ball on the outside of the plate, it didn’t matter much to Baez, who unleashed a hammer of a swing and went opposite field for a monster three-run home run in the second inning.

On a team level, Baez’s blast was instrumental in the Cubs’ 6-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4 of the NLDS, a victory that closed out the series and sent the Cubs to their first NLCS since 2003.

On an individual level, the homer was a cathartic highlight in what has otherwise been a tough and trying year for Baez and his family.

“It means everything to us right now,” his brother Gadiel told Yahoo Sports. “I don’t really know how to explain it to you other than say it means everything.”

Sorrow. Pain. Doubt. Disappointment. Name a negative emotion and Baez and his family experienced it in 2015.

Nothing was worse, of course, than the loss of his 21-year-old sister Noely to complications from spina bifida this spring. Javier and Noely were only 11 months apart and shared a special bond that was documented often in the media as he made his rise in the sport. Noely was the sister who beat the odds and lived two inspiring decades when doctors doubted she’d lived two weeks. Javier was the brother who beat the odds and reached the big leagues despite being raised in a working-class background in Puerto Rico.

Baez asked the Cubs for a two-week leave of absence following Noely’s death on April 8 and was granted it. He mourned his sister with his mother and two brothers while thinking of ways to memorialize her. He started off with a simple tattoo of her name on his forearm, then later had her smiling face inked onto his right shoulder.

“She’s always with me and I’m always with her,” Baez said. “We’re the same.”

(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh) During his trip around the bases on Tuesday, Baez lifted that right shoulder and pointed toward the sky in memory of both Noely and his father Angel, who died in an accident at home when Baez was 12. When he crossed home plate, Baez pointed toward his mother Nelida and brothers Gadiel and Rolando, who were jumping and hugging and screaming in the stands.

“We knew it was coming,” Gadiel late said. “Absolutely knew it.”

Losing a sibling would be hard enough for any baseball player to handle, but Noely’s death also came in the middle of a tumultuous time in Baez’s baseball career.

Though he was the first of the Cubs’ vaunted stable of prospects to be called up — and hit three homers in his first three games — Baez’s shortcomings made him somewhat of the forgotten prospect over the past calendar year. Baez was relegated to Triple-A Iowa this spring after a poor spring training performance in Mesa and a 2014 that saw him strike out 95 times in 213 appearances over 52 games. A Cubs infield crowded with names like Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo squeezed him out and suddenly the No. 9 pick in the 2011 draft was facing a future that might not involve being an integral member of the Cubs’ renaissance.

Then came a broken finger that Baez suffered while sliding into a base on June 7, an injury that required more than a month of rehab and negated any possible midseason callup. Baez’s injury increased the call from some parts of the Cubs fan base to trade him for help on other parts of the roster as the team made its push for the postseason.

The Cubs, though, stuck with him and made him a September callup. His contributions were meager: A slash line of .289/.325/.408 with just one homer and 24 strikeouts in 80 plate appearances.

Baez didn’t get another big opportunity until Monday and that only came when Addison Russell injured his hamstring sliding into third on a triple. Baez played half of Monday’s Game 3, committing a dubious error on one throw and bobbling a ball on another infield hit.

Baez, however, heeded manager Joe Maddon’s advice to leave those disappointments behind as he started Game 4. He also took the lessons of his last year to heart.

“You have to keep fighting,” Baez said. “You have to keep pushing through.”

And so there was Baez batting in the ninth spot against Lackey. Starting pitcher Jason Hammel had halved the Cardinals lead to 2-1 with a single up the middle one batter earlier and was standing on base with one other teammate. Baez strode to the plate looking for a way to add his name to a 2015 Cubs postseason that had just begun but was already packed with highlights from the team’s other young sluggers.

Javier Baez and Family (Kevin Kaduk/Yahoo Sports) One pitch later, Baez had erased an early Cardinals lead that might’ve deflated Cubs teams from other eras and put his name on the ledger of 10 homers the Cubs hit this series.

After the game, Nelida and her two other sons stood on the field and waited for Javier to emerged from a Champagne-soaked clubhouse and join the celebration on the field. When he did, they all shared a hug and then proudly watched as media member after media member came up to talk to Baez about his big day. Rolando filmed every interview on his cell phone while Gadiel talked about heading to wherever the next round, New York or Los Angeles, would take his brother and the Cubs.

Nelida stood to the side with a smile that wouldn’t go away.

Asked how she felt to see her son triumph after a year of struggle, Nelida struggled herself.

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “I don’t have the words.”