Yu Darvish Smoked Cigarettes Between Innings and It Saved His Cubs Career

Anthony Rizzo just dropped a story about Yu Darvish that sounds like it belongs in a dive bar, not a big league clubhouse. And honestly? It might explain why Darvish actually thrived in Chicago.

Rizzo, who retired from MLB recently, has been telling old stories on the podcast circuit. This one involves Darvish, a pack of cigarettes and a Cubs season that nearly went sideways before it got weird.

So here’s the deal. Darvish, now 39, had spent five years in the majors without smoking during games. Back in Japan, though, he was a regular smoker. The problem was that nobody in the States had told him it was okay to light up between innings. Enter Rizzo.

“Darvish’s first start, I was on the IL,” Rizzo said. “We’re down in Cincinnati. I’m talking to Darvish, ‘Yu, what was Japan like? Did you smoke before games?’ He goes, ‘Oh yeah. But here they don’t let me. I want to.’ I’m like, ‘Well, dude. Do it tomorrow.’”

So they did. Rizzo and some other Cubs players joined Darvish for a cigarette before his first inning the next day. Darvish went out and threw seven scoreless. That stretch turned into seven or eight scoreless outings in a row, according to Rizzo.

The problem was finding a place to smoke at Wrigley Field. There’s no good spot in a ballpark that old. So the Cubs got creative. They set up a smoking rig in one of the team personnel’s offices with a system that sucked the smoke out of the room. Darvish would duck in there between innings, take a few drags, and go back out to deal with opposing lineups.

The timing lines up with Darvish’s best season in the big leagues. In 2020, he finished second in NL Cy Young voting with a 2.01 ERA, a 0.961 WHIP and 93 strikeouts. That’s elite stuff from a guy who needed a cigarette break to unlock it.

Darvish now pitches for the San Diego Padres, but he’s out for the entire 2026 season recovering from UCL repair and flexor tendon surgery. The surgery happened last year, and the timeline for return is still up in the air.

But for one strange stretch in Chicago, a pack of cigarettes and a custom smoke-sucking office turned a talented but struggling pitcher into one of the best in the game. Baseball is weird. That’s why we love it.