Dansby Swanson’s emotional day ends with the Chicago Cubs’ 10-3 win against the Texas Rangers

A relaxing morning in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse suddenly turned somber before Saturday’s game against the Texas Rangers.

Mallory Swanson, the wife of Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson and a star on the U.S. women’s national team competing in this summer’s World Cup, suffered a left knee injury during an exhibition game against Ireland and had to be carted off the field and taken to a hospital.

Dansby Swanson watched the game on TV with his teammates and was obviously distraught at the sight of his wife writhing in pain on the field.

But he somehow was able to focus on the task at hand by first pitch, contributing a pair of hits and making a heads-up baserunning play in a 10-3 win against the Rangers.

“He loves this stuff, he loves being out here, he loves competing,” Ian Happ said of Swanson. “Pretty impressive for him today to be able to do what he did. We were all watching the game earlier. Pretty somber (mood). For him to be able to do that and show that kind of emotion …

“We’re feeling for him and his family.”

Left-hander Justin Steele allowed one run over six innings for his first win, and the Cubs won their first series and improved to 4-3 before a crowd of 33,578 at Wrigley Field.

Swanson was not available to speak with the media after the game, and his wife’s condition was unknown. But Swanson’s teammates voiced concern for what Dansby was going through all day. Mallory, a Chicago Red Stars forward, and Dansby married in the offseason before he signed his seven-year deal with the Cubs.

Their schedules have been so busy that at the end of spring training he said they barely got to see each other. Mallory leads the U.S. team with seven goals and scored in six straight matches for the U.S. team entering Saturday.

“I couldn’t imagine,” first baseman Trey Mancini said of Swanson’s emotional day. “She’s just a few months out from the World Cup and been one of if not the best player on the (U.S.) team this year. Dansby talks about her passion for soccer and her mentality, how hard she plays. I see a lot of similarities from the way he describes her. That’s tough, right before a game, for her to get hurt.

“But he locked it in like he always does. That says a lot about him that he was able to do that. He was definitely thinking about her the whole time.”

As for the game, the Cubs hit a pair of home runs in a 14-hit attack, only the fifth and sixth in the team’s seven games. They entered the day tied for last in the majors in home runs, a byproduct of the cold weather at Wrigley and three games against the Milwaukee Brewers starters, according to manager David Ross.

“The guys we faced (with) Milwaukee were really good, some of the best in the game,” Ross said of the opening series. “And I’d also say if we keep throwing shutouts we’re going to be all right.”

It would be nice to dream of a world in which the Cubs could throw shutouts every game, but wins like Saturday will have to suffice.

The real question is whether the Cubs can succeed in the power-dominated baseball world without the home-run hitters most good teams have in abundance.

“We have good baseball players that are going to be gap-to-gap,” Ross said. “Early on it’s nice to have the gap-to-gap, base-hit kind of guys, here especially. When it warms up, we’ll get rewarded for some of the fly balls (knocked down by the wind).”

Ross liked the fact Cubs hitters were going up the middle or the opposite way, an approach they continued Saturday. Swanson’s opposite-field RBI single in the third scored Nick Madrigal to snap a 1-1 tie after Madrigal legged out an opposite-field double.

After Patrick Wisdom’s solo home run in the fourth, his third in five games, Eric Hosmer went up the middle for a two-run pinch single in the sixth to make it 5-1. Mancini added an RBI single to right in the seventh, and the Cubs broke the game open with a four-run eighth. Swanson scored from first on Happ’s two-run single, surprising the Rangers with his aggressive baserunning.

“I’m excited, go into high-five nap, and then people are yelling,” Happ said. “Just a heads-up play from him and good game all around.”

The Cubs ranked 17th with 159 home runs in 2022 and were hoping to improve on that this season. But Seiya Suzuki’s oblique injury matters, and the slap-hitting Madrigal has been moved to third on occasion with Wisdom playing right.

It’s early, but the Cubs’ strikeout percentage has decreased. They struck out 23.8% of the time last season, 10th worst in the majors, but had a 20.5% strikeout rate Saturday, the ninth lowest.

Wisdom has cut down on his prolific rate while maintaining his power stroke. Last season he had the third-highest strikeout percentage (34.3%) of players with 450 or more plate appearances, which was an improvement on his league-worst 40.3% rate in 375 plate appearances in 2021. Balancing his power potential with his lack of contact is an ongoing dilemma.

“That’s the million-dollar question, right?” Wisdom said in spring training. “It’s ‘Do I lose my strength to address a weakness or do I come and meet somewhere in the middle and find ways to exploit my strengths but also limit that weakness?’

“It’s a constant battle. That’s just the cloud over me. But I feel like I’ve done a good job in having good stretches and eliminating those tough, those down stretches. It’s how quickly can I rebound to the person that I am.”

Now he’s one of the key hitters in the Cubs lineup, and the team is thriving in the early going.

“Being surrounded by great guys in this clubhouse definitely helps,” he said Saturday. “They’re confident in you when you walk up there, and that’s always a good feeling.”