EXTRA: Back to 'Wait 'til next year?'

Are we back to flying the 'L' flag?

The dreams of Chicago Cubs ball clubs capable of winning championships in two consecutive seasons are now down the toilet -- the Cubs' 11-1 loss Thursday ensured the Los Angeles Dodgers will be the National League champions for 2017 and will go to the World Series beginning Tuesday.

It's a low blow to those Cubbie fanatics who were delusional enough to think their fave ball club is now among the league elite and was somehow entitled to a second-straight World Series appearance.

ALTHOUGH IT REALLY shouldn't be. Winning two straight championships in professional athletics is difficult. There are a lot of teams that would consider winning one championship (the way the Cubs did in 2016) to be significant. Nothing takes away that accomplishment.

It will be curious to see now the Cubbie faithful react to losing. Will they become obnoxious in their whining that somehow they were entitled to victory in 2017? Such arrogance is considered tacky when it comes from New York Yankees fans, but then again, the Yankees back up such talk with winning ways.

What I don't see is something along the lines of Bill Veeck during the 1940s stint that he owned the Cleveland Indians. He had them when they won their last (to this date) World Series ever in 1948, and when it became mathematically impossible for the Indians to repeat as champions in 1949, he conducted a ceremony in which he buried the World Series championship banner the Indians had flown that season.

Implying that the championship days were over, and it was time to focus on the future.

WHICH TO THIS date are still World Series-title-less -- to the point where I'm sure Cleveland baseball fans would be thankful to have come as close as the Cubs did this year to repeating (rather than losing to the Yankees in the Division Series round of this year's playoffs). Or Pittsburgh Pirates fans who made playoff appearances, but have been unable to break their own streak of four decades without a championship.

Kike matches Reggie's 3 homers

What I'm more inclined to expect is Cubbie fan whining along the lines of how 2016 is supposed to live on forever -- and how 2005 (the year the Chicago White Sox won this city's first World Series title in this century) is a year to be forgotten.

It will be this obnoxious attitude that will fuel the dislike that fans of Chicago's two ball clubs have for each other.

And could be the impetus of what could become an ultimate World Series, from the Chicago perspective -- a rebuilt White Sox with a Cuban connection at its core against the Cubs, perhaps by 2019. Which would be the centennial of that World Series that lives in Chicago baseball infamy and is in desperate need of erasure.

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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!

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Cubs fans will celebrate, but maybe we ought to root, root, root for the Pirates

The Chicago Cubs will continue to play ball for at least one more day, as they’ll be traveling to Pittsburgh to take on the Pirates this week for the right of which Wild Card team gets to take on the baseball division winners throughout October.

Is it the Pirates' turn to overcome losing ways?

I’m sure some Cubs fans are going to whine. That rant about being one of the best teams (based on won-loss record) in the National League, yet having to still fight for the right to compete.

EVEN THOUGH THE Cubs didn’t exactly choke. They finished their season with an eight-game win streak, and has many prognosticators wanting to believe this is the year that both the years 1945 AND 1908 lose their historic significance.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if it is more interesting if Pittsburgh winds up beating Chicago and going on to play the St. Louis Cardinals, with that winner taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers/New York Mets victor to claim the National League championship.

I’m sure some reading this will scream “Heresy!!!!!” and start sending me vulgar e-mail messages.

It’s just that I can’t help but think that the Cubs have already achieved far more than anyone had any right to expect this year. Whereas Pittsburgh has the ball club that in recent years has recovered from decades of dreck to come close to playoff success.

PERHAPS IT IS time for the Pirates to move forward. Perhaps it is Pittsburgh’s “turn” to move forward and win something – instead of those who have wanted to believe since back in May that it has to be the Cubs’ “turn” for victory.

 

One-time White Sox ace could be done

Somehow, the idea of a New York Yankees or Toronto Blue Jays World Series matchup against the Pirates or Dodgers is more intriguing than anything involving the Cubs or the intoxication crew that surrounds Wrigley Field.

 

Besides, if the Cubs really are the legitimate championship-quality ball club their fans want to believe they are, there are 2016 and 2017 to look forward to. If the Cubs can’t do anything in those years, then perhaps this whole era is as over-rated as Chicago White Sox fans will say it is.

As for the White Sox, they won two games of their final three-game series against the Detroit Tigers, but finished the season with a loss – and a 76-win season. Just short of the 78 to 82 win season I suspected they would have at season’s beginning.

Buehrle still far behind Spahn achievement

I WONDER HOW many White Sox fans on Sunday had their attention focused on Toronto, where the Blue Jays got their butts whomped by the Tampa Bay Rays and one-time White Sox ace pitcher Mark Buehrle gave up seven runs in two-thirds of an inning – costing the Blue Jays any chance of finishing the regular season with the American League’s best won-lost record.

 

The only reason Buehrle was called upon to pitch Sunday, just two days after pitching nearly seven innings on Friday. It was meant to give Buehrle a chance to pitch two full innings, bringing his season total to 200.

That would have made Buehrle one of only four pitchers to ever reach that season total in 15 or more straight seasons. All of those three – Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton and Warren Spahn – are in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

It would have been something for White Sox faithful who remember the decade-plus that he was the ball club’s best pitcher to celebrate. Instead, it added to the stink that was 2015 – with many fans fearing that 2016 will be more of the same because team manager Robin Ventura WILL return next year.

ONE OTHER ISSUE involving the end of the 2015 season – I thought it tacky that the Houston Astros ended their season with a loss that also ensured they would have to have their possible one-and-done playoff game at Yankee Stadium instead of at home, and yet the team could be seen celebrating with the now-expected champagne dousing.

What are they really celebrating? Creeping into the playoffs by a slot that didn’t even exist until a couple of seasons ago?

The Cubs still have a few rounds of winning to go before they can say they matched this achievement

Then again, I’m sure the White Sox – who beat up on the Astros in the 2005 World Series – would give anything if they could have an excuse to celebrate anything except avoiding a Last Place finish in ’15.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Perhaps one reason I like the idea of Pittsburgh in the World Series is I still recall one of the most-fun series I ever saw was the 1979 version when the Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles four games to three. When Willie Stargell led "the Family" to a dominant ball club; remember all those stars circling their 19th Century-inspired stovepipe caps? And when "Sister Sledge" wound up gaining the one bit of musical fame that they're still remembered for.

Cubbie Power? Or just a third-place ball club like the White Sox might be

Is the World Series headed for Wrigley Field in 2015? Not likely.

I don’t know what to make of this year’s version of the Chicago Cubs.

I get the fact that the team’s fans are going to get all excited about a team that is likely to have a winning record – considering that the last five years resulted in losing records for the Cubs, and last-place finishes in each of the last two seasons.

SO THE FACT that it would take a collapse of historic proportions for the ’15 Cubs to be a losing ball club (even I believe the Cubs will win at least three of their remaining 26 ballgames) means this year is already successful for the team. They’ve already accomplished far more than anybody had any right to expect.

But do I really think of this as a ball club that has a right to think of itself as being championship-quality? I don’t think so.

Maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I can’t get beyond the fact that the Cubs are likely to finish in third place in their own division.

I can’t help but think that any team that has two other ball clubs in its own division that are better ought to be thinking in terms of next year and how to make themselves better to overcome.

THIS 2015 SEASON ought to be the year we ponder the quality and future of the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates – particularly since the Pirates themselves declined into decades of crud occasionally topped by mediocrity.

If the Pirates were able finally this year to prevail and win a National League pennant (for the first time since Sister Sledge ruled the music charts), that would be a remarkable baseball story in and of itself.

Yet there are those who are determined to believe that it is the Cubs resurgence that ought to be our prime desire. Then again, I don’t know that resurgence is the correct word – the team has been so awful for so many decades, while resurgence implies that they were once worthy.

Big national newsplay for a 3rd place ball club

Do you really want to know what I think of a third place finish? It means someone else is better (and I don’t care if you want to say that they are the best “third place” team in baseball).

HECK, THE CHICAGO White Sox also have the potential to be a third place team – they were only two games behind the Cleveland Indians by the end of Labor Day. They could wind up topping the Indians, while finishing behind the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins by the beginning of October.

The year 2015 could easily wind up being a baseball season in which both of Chicago’s ball clubs finished in third place!

It could also be a season in which, because of the quirks of modern-day baseball’s desire to have extended rounds of playoffs, in which the Cubs get dragged into the playoff picture come October – only to be the team that gets knocked out in a first-round play-in game. While all the legitimate “first place” ball clubs advance to the full-fledged playoffs.

I’m sure the Cubs fans are going to rant and rage (I anticipate your messages telling me how full of it I am) that a third-place finish under these circumstances is special. I just don’t buy it.

I’M INCLINED TO think this is a part of the rebuilding effort – and nothing more. This was supposed to be the team that wouldn’t have a serious chance of winning anything until NEXT year.

As in 2016, and not the perennial “next year” that Cubs fans always whine about.

So my own thought about the significance of baseball in Chicago this season is that I hope Cubs fans have enjoyed the boost they got in ’15. Although I wonder how many will rant that the New York Mets may wind up in the playoff picture this year, while the Cubs may not. Particularly if the Washington Nationals play well enough in coming weeks to win their division, while the Mets play well enough to be the other wild card playoff slot that Cubs fans seem to feel they already have clinched.

Will we get a 21st Century take on this moment?

Memories of 1969 and tales of that black cat (along with fables of a silly goat) may wind up being spewed as excuses. For THAT is the true character of the Chicago Cubs franchise.

  -30-

What does it take to achieve literal sainthood – do Serra, Clemente qualify?

What does it take to become an officially-recognized saint of the Catholic church? It seems the criteria are ever evolving to the point where future saints aren’t going to be universally recognized.

With our current society being in a mode of wanting to turn every possible issue into a politically partisan brawl, how long will it be until our choice of saints becomes an issue to pick a fight over?

WHAT MOTIVATED ME to think about this was a pair of stories I stumbled across last week – one about the fact that Father Junipero Serra will be canonized as a saint. The other about the fact that certain people want to make a saint of one-time Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente.

For those who are scratching their heads at the mention of Serra, he’s a character most of us encountered briefly in elementary school history classes. He was a Catholic friar who helped create the settlements that have evolved into California’s major cities.

Which means he helped create the first European settlements in what is now the United States. Although my own memories recall being in a fifth grade class in which none of my classmates could even fathom how to pronounce Serra’s name.

Serra helped to bring the Catholic church and European ways to the indigenous peoples who previously had called the west coast their home. We certainly wouldn’t have our modern-day society if not for his efforts.

OF COURSE, THE Los Angeles Times reported that is what ticks some people off to the point where they’re going to resent the fact that Pope Francis has given the 18^th century friar the highest recognition the church can bestow upon his memory.

Because the Catholic church, in its desire to spread its influence and “save the savages” from eternal damnation, imposed such pressure to assimilate that the tribal influences were devastated – along with many of the individuals to whom foreign diseases brought by the church’s individuals wound up being deadly.

Serra – the saint who created our society, or some sort of Catholic killer?!? I’m sure there are those who can come up with even more over-the-top rhetoric when expressing their contempt for the lack of a native presence in California.

Then again, there are those who are all too eager to believe that California – and just about everything west of St. Louis – was a vast land of emptiness until the white settlers came along in the 19^th century.

I’M SURE THEY’LL be the ones who will aggressively push Serra’s sainthood because it fits their notion of what the world ought to be.

Although I wonder what they’ll think of the notion of slugger Sammy Sosa’s idol also being recognized as a Catholic saint? It hasn’t happened yet – and may never happen. These kinds of things take time.

But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported how the producer of a documentary film about Clemente’s life now wants to document the “miracles” he performed so that he can get official Catholic recognition.

Clemente was a ball player from 1955 until 1972 and is likely the best ball player the Pittsburgh Pirates ever had – whose career, and life, came to a sudden end when the airplane he was riding while filled with goods for victims of a Nicaragua earthquake crashed into the ocean near San Juan.

CLEMENTE’S BODY WAS never recovered. Although his memory became all-the-more elevated. Baseball gave Roberto its highest honor when it eliminated the five-year waiting period and immediately inducted him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Apparently, that isn’t good enough for some.

Richard Rossi, who made the documentary and is trying to build actual support for sainthood, cites evidence of Clemente’s knowledge of pressure points and how they could be used to help ease pain. Does that amount to the ability to heal the sick? By that definition, just about every chiropractor qualifies for sainthood!

But how many chiropractors could win the World Series MVP (in 1971, against the Baltimore Orioles) while also inspiring the Latin American community? Or create a culture along the West Coast?

  -30-

I know I'm not the only Chicagoan who didn't feel the earth move under my feet

This is starting to feel absurd.

The strongest earthquake to hit the Midwestern U.S. in decades, one that was felt across a multi-state region and which has generated at least 22 aftershocks (including two this morning) – and I have yet to feel a thing.

THE FUNNY PART of this is, I’m not alone. A scan through the Internet will encounter many weblogs with entries written by people who feel the need to acknowledge that an earthquake has occurred – even though they have no first-hand stories to tell.

There also are other anecdotes floating around out there about people whose only reaction to hearing the word “earthquake” is to scrunch their face in bewilderment and say, “huh?”

My favorite appeared in the Post-Gazette newspaper of Pittsburgh, where the baseball writer surveyed the Pirates (who happened to be in Chicago at the time to play a series against the Cubs) to get their reactions.

None of the ballplayers felt a thing, with third base coach Tony Beasley confessing that had he felt anything, “I would have thought I was dreaming.”

TOM GORZELANNY, A pitcher for the Pirates, only learned about an earthquake when his wife in Pittsburgh told him about it. “I didn’t feel it,” he told the newspaper.

Now some might argue that ballplayers are just a little too self-absorbed to be credible non-witnesses. That may be true.

But the simple fact is that I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary about my surroundings during the earthquake or any of the aftershocks.

I was in bed asleep when the initial earthquake (5.2 on the Richter scale) hit, and was driving my car en route to pick up my niece at her day care center when the first aftershock hit Friday morning.

SUPPOSEDLY, THERE HAVE been many aftershocks since then all through the weekend, with the most recent ones occurring Monday at 12:40 a.m. (a 4) and supposedly another that took place sometime around 8:15 a.m.

I didn’t feel it. I only know it occurred because I happened to be watching one of the morning news programs on Chicago television when WFLD-TV’s Tammie Souza (in the middle of a weather forecast) said we had just experienced yet another aftershock.

Of course, she confessed to not having felt anything either.

I hate to bring any of this up because it sounds like I’m trying to trivialize the event – which appears to be centered around the Southern Illinois towns of West Salem and Mount Carmel (both of which are in the southeastern part of the state near the Indiana border – about 240 miles from Chicago).

I’D LIKE TO think it is the distance from the epicenter that makes these quakes such a minor event for us.

But I have read the tales of people who were jostled out of their sleep Friday morning (I’d like to think that if the South Side had truly been hit with a tremendous disaster, I also would have been awoken from my sleep) and others who suffered minor property damage.

There’s a website called “Apartment Therapy” that is filled with tales and anecdotes of people allegedly from Chicago who felt the earth shift.

But I have yet to personally meet anyone who can share a personal story (which is the case with a metropolitan area of more than 8 million people – there are very few events that are truly universal to all the people of the Chicago area).

IN FACT, THE closest I can come to having talked to someone who felt any tremors was a conversation with my mother. She was awake at the time of the initial earthquake and felt nothing.

But when she went to a scheduled early morning medical treatment, the earthquake was the talk of the waiting room, as about half of the would-be patients said they felt something, and a couple claimed it was the tremors that woke them from their sleep.

So how big a deal should we be making of this earthquake?

I’m thinking particularly of the news media coverage that has been trying to portray this as an event of historic proportions.

IT IS, FOR the area. The Midwest usually gets one or two (tops) earthquakes of any significance per century. I’d like to think that this event carries us over into the year 2050 (by which time I would be so old I might have a legitimate reason to be oblivious to shaking pavement).

And I realize there is a sense among Chicago-based news gathering organizations that they are supposed to cover the entire Midwest region. But is this truly a story just for Southern Illinois?

While I realize there has been some property damage, I have yet to hear any reports of fatalities (and if anyone does know of deaths, I would appreciate you pointing them out to me).

By continually hyping every single aftershock that very few people felt, are the local television types (and the Chicago Tribune – whose idea of Chicagoland stretches from Detroit to Kansas City) making themselves look silly?

COULD THIS LITERALLY be the one time that the Chicago Sun-Times’ microscopic view of the world (their idea of Chicagoland at times doesn’t even cover all of Cook County, Ill.) saved them from over-hyping an event?

When other newspapers across the Midwest were hyping up the earthquake story like crazy, the Sun-Times gave us the tale of the grandfather who dived into Lake Michigan to save his infant grandson, whose stroller rolled off Belmont Harbor (both grandfather and grandson remained hospitalized Monday).

The earthquake warranted one square inch of space in the lower corner of Page One, and that was only to tell us that a story could be found inside on Page 5. Tony Rezko getting out of jail on $8.5 million bond and the scrapping of the spindle (that tacky bit of “art” consisting of junk cars on a spike that made its way into background shots of that forgettable film “Wayne’s World) also got better play than the earthquake.

The simple fact is that an earthquake of 5.2 is somewhat minor, compared to the land shifts that take place along the West Coast. California experiences such tremors on a regular basis.

WHEN COMBINED WITH the fact that this event did not result in any deaths, I’m sure all this coverage is making the Midwesterners look like a batch of rubes to the California crowd.

It also adds to the cynicism felt by many Chicagoans toward their local businesses that make their money by gathering news. I lost count of the number of times this weekend I heard people dismiss earthquake coverage as yet another example of an irresponsible media trying to make a story out of nothing.

So to the people of Southern Illinois and southeast Indiana who may have to find alternate housing while their earthquake damaged homes are repaired or rebuilt, I sympathize. Don’t take my concern about over-coverage in Chicago as being a lack of concern.

It’s just that I fear too much coverage here will convince the bulk of Chicagoans that nothing really happened, not here nor anywhere else. The end result would be that the bulk of Illinois’ population would come to wrongly downplay what has occurred in the land of Little Egypt.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: This young Chicagoan didn’t feel the earthquake (http://chigirlslife.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-didnt-feel-earthquake.html), largely due to imbibing excess quantities of man-made substances.

For those people who want to read stories of Chicagoans who experienced the earthquake, this (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/news/midwest-earthquake-did-you-feel-it-at-home-048402) is as good a place as I can recommend.

Illinois government officials are preparing to swarm into Southern Illinois to assess (http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/04/18/front_page/24174951.txt) damage, despite claims (http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/04/18/front_page/24173780.txt) there was little lasting effect of Friday’s earthquake.