Major League Baseball on Sunday announced the start times for the National League Wild Card series in which the Cubs will be taking on the San Diego Padres.
The first pitch for Game 1 of the series will be thrown at 2:08 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, at Wrigley Field.
The first pitch for Game 2 will be thrown at 2:08 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, also at Wrigley Field.
The Cubs clinched the NL wild card after beating the St. Louis Cardinals 7-3 on Saturday. This is the first Cubs postseason appearance since 2020.
The Cubs and the Padres have a storied history in the postseason. In 1984, the Cubs won the National League Eastern Division championship — making the postseason for the first time since losing the World Series in 1945.
The first two games were played at Wrigley Field, and the Cubs won both — clobbering the Padres 13-0 in Game 1, and winning 4-2 in Game 2. But the Padres won the next three games at Jack Murphy Stadium and went on to win the series.
The Padres went on to lose the 1984 World Series to the Detroit Tigers — the very same team to whom the Cubs lost the 1945 World Series. It took until 2016 for the Cubs to make the World Series again, and to win the World Series for the first time since 1908.
