Well-traveled catcher Christian Bethancourt thought he had run out of chances. Then the Cubs called

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Christian Bethancourt understands he's running out of chances. That when you're 32 and have bounced from team to team and country to country without ever really sticking, at some point the phone is going to stop ringing.

So when the Chicago Cubs took a flier on the well-traveled catcher in early July shortly after Miami released him, Bethancourt accepted his Triple-A assignment with a smile.

The early returns weren't promising. Bethancourt was hitting .192 at Iowa when the Cubs recalled him on July 26 following an injury to backup Tomás Nido.

Knowing he would be playing only once every few days — a departure from last season, when he appeared in 104 games for Tampa Bay — Bethancourt poured himself into his work. More time in the cage. More time working on pitch framing.

And then on Wednesday, the player who has struggled to put it all together seized a moment that seemed far away just a few weeks ago.

With a fan behind home plate at PNC Park yelling “You stink!” as Bethancourt strode to the plate with the bases loaded and the Cubs trailing by a run in the ninth, he delivered a sharp two-run single — his sixth and seventh RBIs of the day — that gave Chicago the lead in what became an improbable 14-10 comeback victory.

“I was like, ‘You cannot stink this time,’” Bethancourt said. “Like, 'You've got to make him shut up.' And that's what I did.”

Delivering when called upon has become a bit of a habit since Bethancourt joined the Cubs. Bethancourt is hitting .423 with three home runs and 15 RBIs in his 11 games with Chicago, heady territory for a player who had all of seven RBIs in 38 appearances for Miami earlier this season before being let go.

Bethancourt drove in a run on a groundout in the second inning. He hit a two-run shot to the bleachers in left field in the seventh, though at the time all it did was cut Chicago's deficit to 10-5. He laced a two-run double in the eighth to help bring the Cubs within two heading into the ninth.

Chicago had runners on the corners and Pete Crow-Armstrong at the plate when Dansby Swanson stole second. The Pirates intentionally walked Crow-Armstrong to set up a forceout that never came. Bethancourt pounced on a 98 mph fastball from Pittsburgh closer David Bednar and ripped it to left to score two runs and push Chicago's record to 5-1 during a road trip that has kept alive its very slim postseason hopes.

It also served as a little bit of baseball justice for a lifer who has found a way to hang around by doing whatever is asked. He broke into the majors with Atlanta in 2013 and spent two seasons as a backup with the Braves before being shipped to San Diego in late 2015.

The Padres flirted with the idea of making him a reliever and Bethancourt spent a winter in his native Panama trying to become a two-way player. The pitching part never really clicked and San Diego let him become a free agent at the end of 2017. He signed a minor league deal with Milwaukee and spent all of 2018 in Triple A. A shot at the majors never materialized and Bethancourt left for South Korea in 2019.

“He’s been everywhere and most importantly, just stuck to it,” said Cubs manager Craig Counsell, who was managing the Brewers in 2018 when Bethancourt joined the organization. “You know, the game hasn’t necessarily handed him all good things and he’s had to persevere through it.”

Bethancourt made his way back to the majors with Oakland in 2022 before being flipped to the Rays. He spent 2023 as their primary catcher only to be placed on waivers at the end of the season. Cleveland picked him up for a month before the Marlins purchased him, only to let him walk after he had seven RBIs in 38 games — or the same number he put up in five at-bats on a steamy late summer afternoon that highlighted the fates of two teams heading in opposite directions.

“You get as many as I did today, that’s an unbelievable day,” said Bethancourt, who hit .281 in a stint at Triple A with the Pirates in 2021. That’s probably a day I will not forget.”

Even better, all that production came in a victory that pushed the Cubs to 68-66 and within faint shouting distance of the National League's third wild-card spot. Chicago is 19-10 since Bethancourt's meandering career took another sharp turn, this one for the better, a rarity for someone who has played more than 1,000 games as a professional somewhere other than the majors.

Yet he has found a way to stick around, well aware the clock is ticking. He wondered when the Marlins let him go if the clock had struck zero. Then the Cubs called.

“I was like, 'This is probably my last shot,'" he said. “'So I have to take the most of it.'"

And he has.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Will Graves, The Associated Press