- My parents took me to one or two Cubs games every year when I was little. Grandstand seating was unreserved back in those days, so we’d sit up under the upper deck. The park was never crowded, so we’d be all by ourselves away from the beer drinkers and smokers. We’d always leave in the seventh inning to beat the crowds. (Dad would always say “We can listen to the rest of the game on the radio.” I didn’t think about it much as a kid, but when anybody pulls that line on my now I say, “Why did we come at all. We could have listened to the whole game on the radio.”) Dad told me I was at the final game Stan Musial played at Wrigley Field.
- Mom would always have the Cubs game on WGN when I came home from school and during the summer. Listening to, and rooting for, the Cubs was just something you did in my family. I don’t remember a time when the Cubs weren’t part of what was going on in our house.
- I began following baseball seriously in 1967. Maybe it was because that’s when the Cubs became competitive for the first time in my lifetime. They finished in third place. The Cardinals played the Red Sox in the World Series and I followed the games closely. I can still recall the Cards lineup from that year.
- My Dad used to listen to the Cardinal night games on KMOX. It shared a place on the dial with WMBI, so we had to wait for Moody to go off the air before we could tune it in. Dad knew I liked to listen, so he’d let me keep my bedroom door open so I could hear from the other room. I spent many, many evenings in my bed listening to Harry Caray and Jack Buck broadcasting Cardinal games. The Cardinals have been “that team” for me as long as I’ve been a Cubs fan. That’s why this past week was so sweet.
- 1969. The Cubs had winning records in ’67 and ’68, and they had a lot of very good players. My favorite was Glenn Beckert, the second baseman. I came home from school on opening day, put my radio on the front doorstep and played catch by myself while listening. The Phillies scored three runs in the 9th to tie the game and then scored again in the 11th to go ahead. And then Willie Smith hit a two-run homer to win the game in the bottom of the 11th. Cub fans knew right then that that team was going to the World Series. And so it seemed for a while until they collapsed in August and were overtaken by the Mets who went on to win the series.
- The Mets. They had only been around for eight years and had never had a winning season. In 1962, they lost 120 games. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY GAMES. (The worst team in baseball this past season lost 99.) The Mets were losers. They were a joke. They were NOT to be taken seriously. And they not only finished ahead of the Cubs but won the Series. I imagine Cubs fans that year felt a lot like Cardinal fans feel this year. (And I’m sorta rooting for the Mets to beat the Dodgers tonight so the Cubs can beat them and put 1969 to rest.)
- If there had been any question about my being a Cubs fan at that point, it would have been settled once for all by my friendship with the family of one the players, Phil Regan.
- Randy Hundley, the Cubs catcher, came to our church once too. He and his family went out to eat with my parents after the service. I had the flu and couldn’t go. Randy and his wife had just had a baby son. My Dad held the kid and, years later, when that son, Todd, played for the Mets and Cubs and came to the plate, my Dad would say, “I held him in my arms.”
- I never believed that the Wrigleys and the Tribune company, when they owned the Cubs, didn’t want to win. But I very much believed that they didn’t have the baseball knowledge or the incentive to try to make them win. As long as the park was filled, which it generally was, there was no advantage to paying more money to fix it up or to get great players.
- I’ve remained a fan always. When the Cubs have been interesting and competitive, I’ve watched every game I could. During some of the awful years, and there have been several, I’ve watched many fewer games, but I’ve always known what was happening, checking the box scores, following the stats on individual players. There’s never been a time when I didn’t root for them. My thinking was, in part, that if they ever do win, to have given up would be unbearable.
- The difference now is that the Ricketts are Cubs fans. They want to win. Since the day they hired Theo Epstein, I’ve been 100% on board with the new plan. I knew there would be some bleak years, but I could see where they were going with it and I enjoyed watching the process. The Cubs organization is now doing the sort of things winning teams do. There is really no connection between the Cubs of the past and the Cubs now. Yes, the history is there and the Ernie and Ryno flags hang from the foul poles, but it’s very much as though the old Cubs disbanded four years ago and a new expansion team called the Cubs started up in Chicago.
- It’s fun watching the rest of baseball adjust to this fact. Everybody still thinks of the Cubs in their old, historic, lovable loser guise and is having a tough time adjusting to the new reality.
- Case in point. In game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, the Cubs had a 3-0 lead on the Marlins. There was one out and a man on second. Mark Prior had a 3-2 count on Luis Castillo who hit a foul ball to left field. Moises Alou went over to the wall to attempt the catch when Steve Bartman reached out and deflected the ball. Alou went nuts. Every Cubs fan watching, including myself, immediately experienced a feeling of total dread. Right then, the game, the series and the season were over. But why? It was a foul ball. If it had been hit ten rows further back into the stands, it would have just been a foul ball. If Bartman hadn’t touched it and Alou had tried but failed to make the catch, it would have been just a foul ball. Nobody would have noticed it. And yet we all knew it was the end. The Marlins scored eight runs in the inning and won the game and the series. The Cubs didn’t win another postseason game until the Wild Card Game against the Pirates this year.
- But look at this year. In the first five postseason games, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, and Chris Bryant have all made errors in key situations that allowed the other team to extend innings. I don’t recall the exact details, but I know a couple of those errors were in late innings of close games and put runners on base and brought good hitters to the plate. They weren’t foul balls, they were costly errors. But see, I don’t even remember the exact details because this is no longer THAT team. I didn’t get feelings of dread. I knew these guys could deal with it. And they did.
- Some Cardinal fans are ticked off because the Cubs fans are taking shots at them and the Cardinals’ organization. Give me a break. First, ragging on fans of other teams is half the fun of sports. Second, if the Cubs win the World Series every year for the rest of my life and the Cardinals finish dead last every year for the rest of my life, no Cardinal fan will have heard any where near the number of shots at them and their team as I’ve heard as a Cubs fan to this point in my life. (There are always those fans of every team who go over the top and get vulgar and personal, which is never cool.)
- Cardinal fans boast that they are the best fans in the world. I’m not going to argue. The Cardinals have given their fans a lot of good reasons to be enthusiastic and loyal. It’s not hard to be a good fan of a team like that. Any honest Cubs fan will admit that we’ve been pretty jealous for a long time.
- Which is why I’m having so much fun this year. I think the Cubs are now that sort of organization.
- On the other hand, Cardinal fans, don’t be ridiculous. Being a fan of a good team doesn’t make you a better person.
- For years, I’ve ragged on Cardinal fans who refer to their teams as “we” instead of “them.” I’ve caught myself calling the Cubs “we” a couple of times in recent days. I’ve got to stop doing that.
- While I’m on the subject of the Cardinals … All year long, I heard fans and pundits saying how the Cardinals are so good and their organization so deep that they managed this great record, winning 100 games, in spite of several good players getting injured. They can’t be beaten. They’re a juggernaut. They have such a good system that they can deal with anything. OK. But then, as soon as the Cubs beat them in the NLDS, it was “The Cardinals aren’t at full strength. Their key players were hurt. The Cubs got lucky.” Sorry. You can’t have it both ways. And anyway, I believe that the Pirates had the best record in baseball after May 1 and the Cubs had the best record in baseball after June 1, so I think the question of who was the better team going into the playoffs is an open one. Not trying to detract from the Cardinals great season. I’m just saying that whichever of the three teams in that division came out of the NLDS, it wouldn’t really be a surprise or an upset.
- All five teams still alive in the postseason wear blue caps.
- I believe the baseball on top of the right-field scoreboard is Schwarber’s, but I don’t believe it landed there on the fly. My theory is that it bounced off a building across the street, or perhaps off an airplane, and landed back on the scoreboard.
- This is fun. What ever happens from this point on, this is fun.
To follow up after the Cubs were swept by the Mets in the NLCS.
- I heard an interview with Ron Darling, announcer for TBS and former Mets’ pitcher. He said he watched the Mets all season long and the team in the NLCS was not the same team. They were suddenly playing better in every aspect of their game. He also mentioned how inconsistent, and even random the umpires’ ball and strike counts were, and how this played to the Mets’ advantage.
- Part of the Cubs strategy all season long was to lay off the borderline pitches, force up the opposing pitcher’s pitch count and make him throw something hittable. If the umpire is calling balls strikes, the batter is forced to swing at pitches he doesn’t like.
- Still, the Mets played excellent ball in all areas. The Cubs were out-hit, out-pitched, out-managed, and sloppy in the field. Daniel Murphy hit a home run in all four games (and in the final two in the Mets/Dodger NLDS), an exhibition of hitting that set records for postseason play.
- Having said all that, this series wasn’t as lopsided as it appears at first glance. In the first game, Chris Bryant couldn’t get a ball out of his glove, which allowed a runner to reach first and an inning to continue. On a play at the plate, Montero, the Cubs’ catcher, set up behind the plate. The ball beat the runner, but Montero’s position allowed the runner to slide across the base into the tag. Those two plays go the other way, it’s a tie ballgame.
- In the second game, Arietta got off to a rough start and allowed the first three batters to score — thanks to a Murphy home run. Eliminate that, and the rest of the game is 1-1. If the Cubs could have pulled those two out, it would have been a lot different going back to Wrigley up two games.
- If …
- Some people who jumped on the bandwagon after the Cardinal series lost no time jumping back off and ripping the Cubs. Others see this as a continuation of the curse. I know one guy who had decided to give up on the Cubs after 63 years because of this one series. Whatever …
- I happen to think that considering this season a failure because the Cubs didn’t win the World Series is a lot like considering a vacation to Hawaii a failure because you didn’t make it all the way to Tahiti.
- The Cubs owners and management have stated that they intend to make this a winning team over the long run. During the last four seasons, they have taken a series of steps that prove they mean what they say. That means they will continue to improve the product. Their goal is to get to the postseason. What happens then is anybody’s guess.
- The idea that this current team has four or five years to win it all or it’s just another failure is old-Cubs thinking. That’s the way the Cubs used to be run. But, if the current management does what it says it will do, there is no window. Instead, there will be a constant tweaking and developing of new talent to keep the team competitive always.
- There are no guarantees. That’s why they play the games. And that’s why it’s fun. The suspense, the challenge, the strategy. This team isn’t only fun during the season. They’ve made it fun to watch them during the off-season too.
- I like baseball because it’s baseball. I like the Cubs because baseball is more fun when you pick a team to get to know and to follow. When that team is competitive, it’s even better. If the Mets win the World Series, they will have a total of 102 wins — season and postseason combined. But if they lose, the most wins they can get is 101, just the like the Cardinals and Cubs already have. (The Mets lost, with only one win in the World Series, so their win total for the year was 99.) You’re setting a pretty high standard if you consider that a failure for the Cubs and a reason to give up on a team.