It’s Not Gonna Happen (Maybe Next Year)
The Lovable Losers are on the ropes once again, one game from another early playoff exit, and one loss from making it 100 years and counting since they won a championship
SCOTT JACOBS
The Chicago Cubs coasted to 97 wins, put a great deal of separation between them and the rest of the NL Central, and convincingly rolled to the best record in the National League. Fans, experts, anyone with a voice began chanting, “This is the year. This is when the stars will allign, hell will freeze over, and the Cubs will finally win a championship.”
O Chicago, if it was only so easy.
Wait till next year? Sounds about right, after the Los Angeles Dodgers stunningly pushed the Cubbies to the brink of elimination, obliterating the North Siders in a pair at Wrigley to take a commanding 2-0 lead in this best of five series.
Maybe it’s really not shocking. Maybe we’re just naive buying into the notion that the law of physics says after a century of futility and frustration a team has to be due. These Cubs don’t look elite. And right now, they don’t look like they’re going to fulfill the destiny that their loyal faithful thought they would.
Instead, the last game (probably) played at Wrigley this year was a classic dud. A 10-3 spanking to LA, a team that has just come out of nowhere to not only win the NL West, but to look like a prime contender to win the National League. The baby bears looked liked they didn’t belong as they committed three (count ‘em) THREE errors in the second inning.
Not only did the Cubs drop two to the Dodgers, they dropped two at home, in the friendly (although the spattering of boos didn’t sound so friendly today) confines of Wrigley Field.
The Cubs made four errors on the night but the Dodgers earned this one. They scored on a bunt, they got it done on gapers, and once again Manny Ramirez came through with another long home run. Man, has he been the perfect pickup for a Dodgers team now one win away from their first playoff series win in 20 years! You can say all you want to about C.C. Sabathia, but we might look back when it’s all said and done, and crown Manny as the greatest mid-season pickup of this year. The guy has been brilliant, and the Dodgers have been great since they landed him.
As for the Cubs? Well, they’re once again displaying why regular season success means nothing. There’s a reason so many teams win the World Series as a wild card, or road team. Seeds mean virtually nothing in baseball. When you break it down the four teams are so closely matched for the most part that a Dodgers series victory wouldn’t be monumental.
Devastating to Cubbies fans, yes. But world-breaking, mind blowing, no, not really.
We saw this with Seattle in 2001 when they won 116 games and didn’t even make the World Series. So if the Cubs get knocked out, no one should be amazed. It’s a shame for Chicago if it happens. And it makes you wonder if it will ever happen, but outside of the Windy City it’s just baseball being baseball.
In a five game series anything can happen. Great pitching, timely hitting, good defense, and a relief staff that gets hot at just the right time is what it takes. The Dodgers have it.
I’m starting to believe.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer in the Cubs.
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Such insight for a 2-0 series. Didn’t you just say “Cubs in 5″ about this series? That meant that you thought they’d lose two of the five games.
I quote you from yesterday: LA will steal a couple games to make it interesting, but Chicago prevails.
Have some backbone with your entry from less than 48 hours ago!
Jered, first off thanks for the feedback. Okay, as for my “Cubs in five.” I said that prediction off the idea that it would be a 1-0 series, 1-1, 2-1 type of series. I had no idea this hurricane of Dodger Blue was going to hit the Windy City. Yes, I got sucked into the hype too, hence the Non-Disney-esque prediction at the bottom of that article. It’s not the fact that the Cubs are down 2-0. Its the way they’re down 2-0. They’ve been outplayed in every aspect of this series, and the Dodgers have taken it to them. Chicago has a lot of burden on them to win it all, and so far they can’t even get out of their own way.
Three errors in one inning? Inexcusable! The Dodgers are not the better team, but they’re the hotter team playing better baseball at the right time.
And to quote something I said in that article as well:
“Here’s the thing: everything is set up for the Cubs to fail.”
It seems like that line is coming to fruition.
So yeah, my prediction doesn’t look good right now, but hey, there’s always next year. Right?
[…] The Cubs fail…again. […]
It’s certainly not going to happen next year or ever.