EXTRA: 4-2 + 4-1 + 5-2 + 8-3 = Sweep

Yes, it seems that Chicago Cubbiness has retained its essential character. The final round of the National League playoffs resulted Wednesday in the New York Mets managing to thoroughly wipe up the floor with the Cubs.

Looks like the Post won't have to take it back

There won’t be anything resembling a championship in Chicago from 2015. The year 1945 is still the last time the Cubs were National League champions, while 1908 is still the last time the Cubs actually won the World Series.

THE CUBS LOST their fourth game of a seven-game series on Wednesday, and bringing the cinematic images of Marty McFly and Henry Rowengardner to the ballpark didn’t do a thing to add to the Wrigley Field aura.

Although perhaps it is good that there wasn’t a single person who could be the goat – no Leon Durham a la 1984 or Steve Bartman of 2003. In short, the reason the Cubs lost to the Mets after being up on the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals is because the Mets played better this week.

So now, the Cubs have another reason to think of the Mets as a ball club they detest. And not just because everybody enjoys a chance to dump on Noo Yawk any chance they get.

The Cubs lost to the Mets, and there wasn’t any black cat a la 1969 to blame! The New York Post won’t have to take back its front page from Saturday.
 

Still the ultimate goat

NOW AS I have written before, I’m an American League fan – kind of pulling for Toronto to come from behind to beat Kansas City, and whoever wins there to whomp all over the Mets.

Just think, a World Series between the U.S.’ largest city and that of Canada. It almost sounds like the real thing.

Personally, I think Cubs fans ought to be pleased. Because their favorite ball club outperformed significantly what any fan had any right to expect from 2015. Who knows? It may even be one of those years that develops experience that pays off in 2016 or ’17.
 

How long until Cubbiedom forgives him?

A World Series title then could make the stink of Wednesday wither away eventually.

THEN AGAIN, YOU never know what can occur. Let’s not forget the 1993 Chicago White Sox team that came close to an American League pennant and had many people convinced that ’94 was THE year!

I’m not saying we’re going to see a strike come ’16, but who knows what could go wrong.

If we want a local angle, perhaps we can root for hometown boy Curtis Granderson (of the University of Illinois at Chicago and T.F. South High School in suburban Lansing) to keep playing as well in the series as he did against the Cubs.

Although I wonder how many Cubs fans will be big enough to make that leap. Somehow, I doubt there will be many. Probably about as few as those Cubs enthusiasts who actually rooted for the White Sox back in 2005 when they gave Chicago a World Series victory in our lifetimes.
 

Cubs, or ...

SO NOW BASEBALL is over in Chicago. Although we still have the World Series, beginning Oct. 27 and running at least through Halloween and potentially through Nov. 4. Way too close to Thanksgiving for my comfort level.

... twins?

Which may be the big drawback to all the rounds of playoffs that allowed a third-place Chicago Cubs team to even qualify for postseason baseball this year – November ought to be for “hot stove” talk speculating about the future, not watching ballplayers enduring the chill of autumn wearing those hoods that make them look like refugees from the Blue Man Group.

  -30-

No political bets -- this means St. Louis won’t get Cubbie-blue cheesecake

A part of me is pleased to learn there won’t be an official mayoral bet connected to the latest round of playoffs that began Friday between the Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals.

EMANUEL: How will he back Cubbies?

For a part of me has always found it silly to see two political people try to mooch some public attention off of a ballgame, and also for the two public officials to get contributions from local corporate entities to provide the actual payoff.

IT’S NOT LIKE Mayor Rahm Emanuel was offering anything out of his own pocket to the mayor of St. Louis if the Cardinals manage to whomp all over the Cubs – and if the owners of the McNally’s tavern in the Morgan Park neighborhood wind up losing their shirts from all the free beer they give away IF lots of Cardinal home runs wind up leading to a Cubs defeat.

But while Emanuel offered a bet with the mayor of St. Louis tied to the results of the playoffs that will run into next week, it seems Francis Slay won’t play along.

Slay let it be known on Friday that he’s not interested in offering up a St. Louis-themed payoff – in the event the Cubs prevail.

Perhaps the idea of a Lou Malnati’s pizza and Portillo’s Italian beef combo, chicken vesuvio from Harry Caray’s restaurant, a Cubbie-blue Eli’s cheesecake, tickets to the top of the Willis Tower and a river cruise along with a financial contribution to a youth-related charity just didn’t appeal to a city that thinks of fried ravioli and Anheuser-Busch beer products as haute cuisine.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported how Slay didn’t offer up a reason for his rejection of a bet. Although the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported back in 2013 that Slay also refused to make a bet with Boston Mayor Tom Menino on the World Series that year.

As he put it back then, not engaging in gambling, “frees up time of staffers,” while also jokingly saying that making bets on behalf of the Cardinals (with their history of National League championships) “isn’t fair to other mayors.”

SLAY: Too confident?!?

It’s just that the overly-commercial nature of these bets makes them seem all kind of phony – as though Emanuel who has never hid his lack of intense interest in sports is trying to buy an “every man” image. Even though anybody who backed him for office probably did so because he isn’t every man.

It makes me wonder that should it turn out the Cubs manage to beat both St. Louis and the winner of the Los Angeles/New York playoff matchup to win their first National League championship since 1945, would Emanuel actually show up for any World Series games played at Wrigley Field?

I COULD EASILY envision the boos roaring down from the stands if Rahm were to show his face at the ballpark, trying to pretend that wearing a Cubs warmup jacket somehow makes him seem like a real baseball fan!

A Sout' Side blow against Cubbie cockiness?

Maybe on some level, Emanuel would be spared that spectacle if the St. Louis Cardinals were to prevail. Or would Rahm prefer it if the Cubs won a round – then lost to either Los Angeles or New York?

Anything to spare him a World Series spectacle!

Of course, if he didn’t show up at the ballpark for a Chicago-based World Series, that would be even worse for him. There are those baseball-oriented people who STILL rant nearly four decades later about the fact that then-President Jimmy Carter only attended one ball game during his entire presidency.

AND THAT DIDN’T come until the next-to-last year in office, when Carter attended the final game in which Willie Stargell’s Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles (which used to be considered D.C.’s “hometown” team).

So what does it really mean that we won’t have a mayoral bet on this round of playoffs that feeds off the natural rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis as for who’s the dominant Midwestern city?

TUNNEY: Will he take up Cub cause for his ward?

Maybe something more honest than pseudo-bets that are nothing more than free advertising for local businesses. Although when Slay refused to make a bet two years ago, a St. Louis alderman rose up to bet with a Boston councilman.

Perhaps Tom Tunney, the 44^th Ward alderman whose ward includes Wrigley Field, ought to be making a bet with a St. Louis counterpart – offering up some of the famed cinnamon rolls from his Ann Sathers restaurant as the Chicago payoff!

  -30-

EXTRA: Cubs – 4, Pirates – 0

Somewhere, I sense that the spirit of Ernie Banks is happy, while that of Roberto Clemente is appalled (and rattling off a rant in Spanish rivaling anything that ever came from the mouth of Desi Arnaz on "I Love Lucy"), at the Wednesday night playoff game that gave the Chicago Cubs the opportunity to be the team that gets included with the three National League division winners for a chance at the league championship.

Or if you want to take it back a few generations, Mordecai Brown is laughing it up a bit at Honus Wagner’s expense. Gabby Harnett feeling glee over the Waner brothers (both Paul and Lloyd).

MAYBE EVEN 19^th Century star Cap Anson is feeling some joy (although perhaps wondering who let all those “colored boys” out onto the playing field).

In my mind, I can see how all of them have been agitating (playfully, of course) over whose ball club was going to be successful this week.

Now back to the earthly realm of existence that we all occupy; the one where Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta provoked a bench-clearing brawl Wednesday night after the Pirates hit him with a pitch.

ARNAZ: Hearing his laugh at Cubs win

I don’t know if the Cubs are capable of beating St. Louis, Los Angeles or New York in the rounds of playoffs that will resume for Chicago on Friday against the Cardinals. But I do sense that Wednesday’s victory will be enough for Cubs fans to feel some sort of moral victory that we’ll hear about for years to come!

  -30-

Get over Bartman already. He didn't do anything wrong, except spare us the sight of another World Series four-game sweep by New York Yankees!

I still recall coming home from a late night of work 10 years ago Monday to find my brother, Chris, a bit irritated.

Some take this thought too seriously

He was sitting in front of the television watching the National League playoff game being played that night, and listening to the hysteria of announcers getting all worked up over what had just happened a few minutes before.

A FAN A godawful, lowly fan, of all things, had somehow managed to do something stupid that was costing the Chicago Cubs a ballgame, and may well shift the momentum of the game to cause the Cubs to fail to win their first league championship since 1945.

As it turned out, they were talking about Steve Bartman, who at that point hadn’t even been smuggled out of the ballpark to avoid nitwitted Cubs fans from attempting a lynching from the outfield wall.

Yes, the fans that night were stupid enough that they may well have wrapped his neck in the ivy and tried dangling him from those outfield walls.

My brother (who, for what it’s worth, is a New York Yankees fan and was only interested in the National League playoffs that year to see who the Yankees would wind up playing against) was disgusted with the announcer hype that was trying to make it seem as though a lone fan could impact a pennant race in such a way.

THE FACT THAT the Cubs immediately committed a series of plays right after that foul ball that left fielder Moises Alou was unable to catch doesn’t seem to register.

He wasn't gonna catch that ball!!!

Everybody wants to blame Bartman – to the point where he has lived his life in seclusion for the past decade and likely will never go public because there will be some loser Cubs fan who will think he’s defending the ball club’s honor by harming him.

Truly evidence of how pathetic some in our society can be – even though I’m sure there are those people who are desperate to believe that Bartman actually did something wrong.

Even though if you watch the video of the controversial play, all he did was saw a foul ball headed toward where he was sitting in the stands and he was part of a scrum of people that lunged to get it.

THE FACT THAT Alou whined about the fans getting in his way comes across (to me, at least) as someone looking for an excuse for his own inability.

Would '03 have been '32 and '38 repeat?

As I recall, Bartman didn’t even get the ball. Some other fan did, and to my knowledge that person’s identity has never become commonly known.

Which is why I always thought it was ridiculous when “the ball,” as cursed as Cubs fans want to believe it is, wound up at Harry Caray’s restaurant, where somebody rigged it up to an electronic gizmo that caused it to explode into shreds.

Supposedly, some of the dust was mixed in with a pasta sauce that was served at the restaurant as though it were some exotic delicacy – instead of a potential health code violation that should have warranted the restaurant a fine!

IT LITERALLY HAS been a full decade since that ballgame, yet I don’t see any evidence that Cubs fans are willing to let go of the idea that their team should have been in the World Series that year against the Yankees, rather than the Florida Marlins (whose third base coach that year went on to lead the Chicago White Sox to an American League championship and World Series title just two years later).\

Yes, our very own Ozzie Guillen, who during his time as White Sox manager could always be counted on to feed the baseball fire in Chicago by calling Wrigley Field a dump.

Those fans who want to live in an alternate fantasy universe probably dream how the Cubs went on to beat the Yankees – somehow feeding off the fact that Miami wound up beating the Yankees in the World Series.

They want to put a significance to Steve Bartman that is totally unwarranted, and ought to be long-forgotten.

Never sewn to a Cubs' cap

BECAUSE AS IT turns out, the historic significance of the 2003 World Series had nothing to do with the Marlins or the Cubs. It wound up being the last World Series played at the REAL Yankee Stadium.

Although we didn’t realize that fact until the building was closed for good some five seasons later.

  -30-