Soccer meets baseball: How training with a goalkeeper helped Cubs’ Patrick Wisdom at third base

Cubs third baseman Patrick Wisdom makes a leaping catch during a spring training game against the Giants at Sloan Park. (John Antonoff/For the Sun-Times)

SURPRISE, Ariz. – Take a freeze frame of Patrick Wisdom’s leaping catch in the Cubs’ spring training opener, and he almost looks like a goalkeeper. 

He was robbing the Giants’ Blake Sabol of a base hit, elevating to snag a line drive over his head. But replace the baseball with a soccer ball, and he could have been a goalie making a last-ditch effort to push a shot over the crossbar.