The third one went to left center, same as the second. By then the Cubs led by double digits and the score had stopped being the point, but the swing was — because Alex Bregman had done this nineteen days ago.
August 12 was the first time. August 31 was the second. Three home runs in one game, twice in one season. This is the 15th three-homer game in baseball this year. Bregman has two of them.
He opened with a popout to Jake Bauers in foul territory at first. Then the first home run: a fly ball to left, Seiya Suzuki scoring ahead of him, his 21st of the year. The second went to left center, solo, his 22nd. Then a groundout, Cooper Pratt to Bauers. Then a double play, David Hamilton to Brice Turang to Joey Ortiz, erasing Suzuki and stranding Pete Crow-Armstrong at third. Six trips to the plate. Three cleared the wall.
A three-homer game asks a man to arrive three separate times, against pitchers who have watched the first one leave and spent the innings between planning for him. The second home run is harder than the first because the approach changes. The third is the hardest at-bat in the game — everyone in the park knows what is on the table, and the man on the mound has built his night around stopping it.
Bregman's hardest-hit ball of the night left the bat at 100.6 mph. The longest of the three went 397 feet. Wrigley holds balls at that speed and that distance on some nights and keeps them on others. On August 31 it kept none of his.
He drove in four. The Cubs won 17–3. All three home runs went to left field or left center, and the last, his 23rd of the year, came in a game already decided.
Nineteen days apart. Fifteen three-homer games in baseball this year, and the same man has two of them.
