After the last game Anthony Rizzo played at Wrigley Field, he and his family stayed and roamed the outfield. They snapped photos and added one more memory to the trove they already had in that building.
He leaned back into the ivy, letting the vines and brick support him – before saying goodbye to his home field.
It was 2021 on the eve of the trade deadline. And Rizzo had been informed that he was going to the Yankees, ending a decade-long Cubs tenure that spanned a rebuild, three All-Star nods, five postseason appearances, and a World Series.
His trade was the first domino to fall in the 2021 sell-off. The next day, the Cubs would finish disbanding their championship core, sending Kris Bryant to the Giants and Javy Báez to the Mets.
The other two have returned since. Bryant came back with the Giants that September. And just a couple weeks ago, Báez got his Wrigley Field curtain call, now a member of the Tigers.
This weekend, Rizzo is set to finally play his first game at Wrigley since the trade. He returned from the 60-day IL (fractured right forearm) on Sunday, just in time.
“I’m sure Rizzo will be right in line, if not the loudest, of that group,” left fielder Ian Happ said of the reception he expects from the Wrigley faithful. “He meant so much to his organization – to me as a young player, being right next to me [in the locker room] and everything he taught me.”
Rizzo – five years older than Happ and eight older than Nico Hoerner, another former teammate – came up in the league when there was a starker hierarchy between rookies and veterans. As Rizzo stepped into a more prominent role, that dynamic had begun to shift.
“He definitely took it personally to at least make it, for me, feel like I was a part of the group,” Hoerner said. “And also, whether it was stuff at the field or away from it, he was always super open with me. I appreciated how honest he always was about how he felt. And he did it in a comical way. But when you have one of your leading players be really transparent about how they’re feeling, I think it creates a good dynamic for the group.”
Happ thinks of the handshake routine former Cubs outfielder Jon Jay had with Rizzo in 2017.
“He would put the C on his chest as a part of the handshake, and that was who he was to this group,” Happ said – C for captain. “There were a lot of really accomplished veteran players in the room, and a lot of guys with experience that had loud voices. But it always felt, just from his time here, his experience here, everything he had been through before the winning teams, he was kind of the glue in that group.”
When Bryant, Báez and even Kyle Hendricks – the last remaining member of the 2016 World Series team on the Cubs roster – were establishing themselves in the majors, it quickly became clear that the Cubs were on the cusp of something exciting.
Rizzo’s arrival in Chicago predated all that. Acquiring Rizzo was one of Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyers’ early moves after taking over the baseball operations department entering the 2012 season.
“What he did in ‘16, and that group, should always be celebrated,” Hoerner said. “But especially cool that he was here from when the team was struggling all the way through a World Series championship. That’s kind of the coolest thing you can do in one place, and something that I would obviously love to do here.”
Hoerner, who last year signed an extension through 2026, has been through the reset years of the Cubs’ current cycle.
The next step is to make the playoffs – a goal that narrowly alluded them last year and is threatening to fall out of reach this year, despite the team’s strong August. This series against Rizzo and the Yankees could swing the Cubs’ slim odds either way.