O'Donnell: Tauchman's leap year with Cubs tracks from Palatine to little bit o' Seoul

ONE YEAR AGO THURSDAY NIGHT — Aug. 3, 2022 — Mike Tauchman was exactly where he should have been in a professional baseball lineup.

That would be batting first and playing center field.

Now he's probably the most improbable sweetheart of the new ivy rodeo at Wrigley Field.

That energized roundup — the best that Major League Baseball in Chicago currently has to offer — will play on Thursday as a four-game series with the visiting Cincinnati Reds concludes (7:05 p.m.; Marquee Sports Network, AM-670).

An NL-Central championship remains possible within the increasingly happy tales of the Cubs.

BUT ON THAT HOT AUGUST EVE last year, Tauchman was close to 6,500 miles as the kimchi flies from Gallagher Way, collegiate alma mater Bradley University and his hometown of Palatine.

He was playing for the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO League. That's the 10-team association that represents top-tier baseball in South Korea. Experts compare it to a good Double-A or a so-so Triple-A league in the American system.

To the Fremd High grad — now age 32 — the $1 million, one-year gig (including a $300,000 signing bonus) represented a distant chance to keep his pro baseball career alive.

He was playing well. But Hanwha was carrying on an old franchise tradition as the worst team in the KBO.

HE HAD TWO HITS that night. Still, the Eagles lost to KIA, 6-3, in front of 5,238 fans at their compact, 13,000-seat Daejeon Hanbat Baseball Stadium.

(By high-speed rail, Daejeon is approximately 50 minutes from Seoul. The South Korean capital is a 14-hour nonstop from O'Hare Airport.)

Tauchman finished with the dubious distinction of playing the full 144-game KBO schedule. Hanwha, as is its wont, closed 46-96-2. That was droopy enough for 10th and last in the KBO. For the fourteenth time in the last 15 seasons, the Eagles failed to make the South Korean postseason.

The Cubs signed him to a minor-league contract last winter. He's been idol-eligible at Wrigley since May 19.

IN A LOT OF BASEBALL FAIRY TALES, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the benevolence of the diamond spirits kicks in.

For Tauchman, it might have been the magic moment when he first laid eyes on Eileen Ristau of Elgin down at Bradley. He was a year older; she was a marketing major who would pirouette her way to the presidency of the school's Orchesis dance troupe.

They started dating in 2012. A key event was a Zac Brown concert. They married in January 2017. She has followed all of the starts and swerves of his 10-year pro career. Peoria romanticists insist that they first bonded over a full gondola sub at Avanti's.

For the last five years, their third has been Kota, a rescue husky. Kota wowed 'em at “Bark in the Park” when Tauchman played for the Albuquerque Isotopes of the Pacific Coast League, the top minor-league team of the Colorado Rockies.

Kota skipped last season in South Korea. Some say it's because he had heard bad things about Alpo Bulgogi. Whatever the truth, the trio is happily reunited this summer.

After most home games, Tauchman retires to his northwest suburban residence. For a night game-day game sequence, he has a rest-friendly arrangement to stay much closer to Clark and Addison.

HIS LEGEND HAS BEEN EXPLODING since his stunning catch at St. Louis last Friday night.

For those not tuned in to Cubs World, in the bottom of the ninth, the Wigglies led, 3-2. With two out, the Cardinals had a man on third and the potential winning run in Alec Burleson at bat.

Ace reliever Adbert Alzolay served a well-spotted speedball. Burleson got more than enough of it to spot it to deep, deep center field.

Tauchman took 15 rhythmic, floating steps to get to the wall. In a jump timed well enough to dazzle the Orchesis group at Bradley, he snagged Burleson's rocket and saved the victory.

JED HOYER IS ALREADY REFERRING to that evening as “The Tauchman Game.”

It was that great of a catch. Had that been a World Series game, it would be right there with Willie Mays and Vic Wertz, Polo Grounds, 1954.

Tauchman's brand is now alongside “The Sandberg Game” (yay!) — and “The Bartman Game” (boo!).

That's not the forgotten mark of a journeyman.

HE IS A COMET, he's a Cubbie blue blur. He's playing on his field of dreams. He's against all odds.

Already, elements of the Tauchman myth and lore — going all the way back to Fremd (Class of '09) — are being inflated.

A few weeks ago, when the Cubs were at Milwaukee and he came to the plate, the big Brewers message board flashed:

“Mike Tauchman played football with future Badgers standout Scott Tolzien in high school.”

Beep-beep ... oops ... not quite. So sorry.

Tolzien was a senior at Fremd when Tauchman was a freshman in the 2005-06 school year. They did not play together. For the following two prep seasons (2006-07), younger brother Mark Tolzien quarterbacked Mike Donatucci's ferocious Vikings.

Tauchman initially distinguished himself on the gridiron as a safety-wide receiver. As a junior, he intercepted four passes in a spectacular intracity showcase at Palatine.

When both Tolziens moved on up — Scott to Rose Bowl glory at Wisconsin and Mark to Holy Cross — Tauchman was their successor as a “dual-threat” QB. That was the 2008 season, when Fremd grinded out a 14-7 victory over Jimmy Garoppolo and Rolling Meadows.

(Prompting the classic Tauchman line, “Great memory, but I don't want to sound like the guy at the bar who struck out Bryce Harper when he was nine years old.”)

A FINAL NOTE FOR DAVID ROSS as he tries to juggle baseball metrics and that elusive blend of playoffs-push heart and smarts:

In Tauchman's five previous MLB seasons, all six teams he has played for have made the postseason. That includes: the Rockies (2017-18), the Yankees (2019-2021) and the Giants (2021).

All means something. All means nothing

Tauchman — and Eileen and Kota — should be having the time of their life.

It is so far, and so blink-blink, from that hot August night with the hopeless Hanwha Eagles.

And from that gondola sub built for two in Peoria.

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.