Can the Dodgers match the ’05 White Sox postseason accomplishments?

Can 2017 Los Angeles Dodgers ...

Now that we know there’s going to be a Houston Astros/Los Angeles Dodgers matchup come the World Series beginning Tuesday, I can’t help but be reminded of that magical moments of 2005 when it was the Chicago White Sox who managed to “win it all” that autumn.

... match '05 Sox postseason mark?

What was notable about the White Sox’ bid for league and overall championships was that, come playoff time, they became virtually unbeatable.

THE WHITE SOX won the first round of American League playoffs with a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox (with Orlando Hernandez making one of the greatest relief pitching performances I’ve ever seen), then lost only one game in the final round of league playoffs.

Then came their four-game sweep of the World Series proper – as they beat the then-National League Houston Astros (watching the Saturday night playoff game against New York at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, I couldn’t help but remember that extra inning home run by Geoff Blum that was a significant part of the White Sox’ ultimate victory all those years ago).

Now why is any of this particularly relevant as we go into the 2017 World Series – one that sees the now-American League Houston Astros try to win their first World Series title ever?

Chicago native Granderson to play in Series

It’s because of the Dodgers – the team that for awhile this season flirted with the notion of setting a new record for the most wins (116) in a regular season; and wound up actually winning 104, which is still very impressive.

FOR THE DODGERS are the team who this year went through the first round of National League playoffs with a three-game sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, then went through the final round of National League playoffs by losing only one game to the Chicago Cubs.

Could it be that the 2017 Dodgers ball club will match the White Sox’ postseason achievement of an 11-1 record, which puts that team in some fairly historic categories.

Blum provided heroic moment in Houston

It’s comparable to the 1998 New York Yankees, who had a three-game sweep in the first round of playoffs, then a four games-to-two victory in the final round, then a four-game sweep of the World Series that year against the San Diego Padres (who nearly two decades later have yet to return to the “fall classic”).

Some say the 1976 Cincinnati Reds deserve recognition because they went through the whole of playoffs and World Series without losing a game. But back then, there was only one round of league playoffs prior to the World Series.

THEIR 7-0 RECORD in beating the Philadelphia Phillies, then the New York Yankees, isn’t quite comparable to what the ’98 Yankees or the ’05 White Sox did. Or what this year’s Los Angeles Dodgers manage to do – if they can pull off a four-game sweep of the World Series beginning Tuesday against Houston.

Just what are the chances of that happening? Is this year’s Dodger team going to be the historic element of the 2017 baseball season? Or is it going to be the notion of Houston becoming the first ball club to ever win championships for both the National and American leagues (which they were transferred to back in 2013, after having been in the “senior circuit” since the 1962 expansion)?

Honestly, I’m an American League fan who feels like the real American League teams all got knocked out of the running – and this year’s World Series will be the equivalent of a mid-season 1970s regular season ballgame of the old National League West.

So in that regard, I almost wouldn’t mind it if the Dodgers were able to pull off not only a victory – but a four-game sweep. It would provide an element of history to what otherwise would be remembered as the Yankees/Dodgers World Series that failed to come to be. Besides, since the Astros this year have shown they don’t really win on the road, the Dodgers (who have home field advantage) will have to be the favorite.

BESIDES, IF A four-game sweep were to become the end result – it means the baseball historians would have to delve into the records of the past to recall all the other ballclubs that suddenly became so dominant come October.

It means we’d have to give a plug to the first ball club from Chicago to take a World Series title in this century.

Which I think would be ironic since the fans of the Cubbie blue were convinced until just a few days ago that ’17 was intended to be “their year” to make some history – and certainly not a time for remembering the city’s “other” ball club.

So as I watch this week’s World Series action, I’ll admit that a key day will be Thursday. While many will think of it merely as a travel day from Los Angeles to Houston, I'll be remembering that moment of 12 years earlier at the same ballpark when White Sox shortstop Juan Uribe fielded that ground ball up the middle, then threw to first base for the final out that finally ended the White Sox’, and Chicago’s baseball championship drought.

  -30-

Cubbies create nothing but a yawn from me, but White Sox offer no guarantees

I am a life-long Chicagoan interested in baseball who must confess that the presence of the Chicago Cubs in the 2017 baseball playoffs trying to get themselves a second-consecutive World Series berth leaves me emotionally flat.

Chicago baseball fans debate ...

I honestly could care less what the Cubs do this year. And not just because my interest in the local baseball scene focuses on the chances that the Chicago White Sox’ rebuild, with an intense “Cubano revolution,” will result in success.

BECAUSE OF THE White Sox interest, I’m an American League fan – one whom I must admit as a kid enjoyed the New York Yankees ballclubs of the mid-1970s and still remembers that two of their preeminent ballplayers were former White Sox Bucky Dent and Rich Gossage.

... which World Series relevant

I went into this year’s baseball playoffs focusing attention on the Cleveland/New York matchup, figuring that I’d wind up rooting for whichever team prevailed in that early round to go all the way to win the American League championship – then the World Series.

As for the National League? I check the box scores , but really don’t care which team wins. I only want them to ultimately lose to the American League champions.

If there is Yankee success in '17,...

I only saw the last two innings of that final Chicago/Washington playoff game – and will always believe the Cubs were downright lucky to get that 8^th inning pickoff play ruled in their favor because it put to rest the rally that WOULD HAVE resulted in a Washington victory (and the Cubbie faithful crying in their beers).

BUT REALLY, I’M not rooting against the Cubs at this stage of the playoffs Eventually I’ll root for either New York or Houston to beat up on either Los Angeles or the baby blue Bruins of the North Side – whichever prevails this week.

... it could be due to a trio ...

The part of me that roots for the White Sox during the regular season almost wouldn’t mind a Houston/Chicago matchup. It would be downright funny if the Astros – who only once in their history ever made it to the World Series; losing to the White Sox of 2005 before transferring leagues in 2013 – beat up on the Cubs!

White Sox fans mostly are apathetic about the playoffs (even though Cubbie faithful is deluded enough to think the whole world is obligated to root for their ball club), but would get a kick out of history recording the Houston Astros losing to their team, while beating the Cubs.

... of ballplayers with Chicago ties

Not all of Chicago is getting all worked up over Cubbie-mania. There are those of us with real lives, and those of us who are still living off the memories of that aforementioned ’05 World Series victory that was the first for a Chicago ball club in this century

JUST AS REGARDLESS of what happens with the Cubs against the Dodgers this week, Cubs fans will still have their memories of 2016 how they nearly blew a Game 7 lead to the Cleveland Indians, but managed to win in extra innings.

If Jose Lobaton hadn't been picked off ...

It’s the inherent character of Chicago baseball that fans have their team to root for – and the other might as well not exist.

The only way we’d ever get Chicago united over a post-season round of baseball playoffs is if we were to ever get the proper circumstances for an all-Chicago World Series.

Which is the goal of the White Sox re-build, to put their ball club in contention for a World Series berth at the same time that the Cubs may still have ballclubs in contention. That would be a circumstance that would create memories Chicagoans would talk about for the rest of their lives. Which when you consider how young some baseball fans are these days could easily stretch to the final days of the 21^st Century.

... it's likely the 'L' flag would be flying in the minds of Cubs fans

OF COURSE, THERE’S there’s always the problem that there are no guarantees in baseball – just like there’s no crying (remember the film "A League of their Own?"). Nobody knows just how the baseball season will play out until the ballgames are actually played.

It was just a couple of years ago the Pittsburgh Pirates had contending teams that were supposedly going to end decades of losing. Yet they haven’t won a thing – and their window of opportunity may now be over. Similar to those Seattle Mariners teams of the late 1990s to early 2000s – including the 2001 team that still has a record for the most wins in a season, but no league championship or World Series title to show for it. There also are many American League teams throughout the years that represented Boston, Chicago or Cleveland -- to name just a few examples of teams that came so close to winning it all.

A revival in Chicago?

Or maybe the story of coming years will be the resurgence of the Yankees (who haven’t won a World Series since 2009). What if the Yankees were to beat the Cubs in this year’s World Series, and have continued success that prevented the White Sox from winning a World Series birth in the near future?

Could the “Damned Yankees” be the uniting factor for both sides of Chicago baseball in years to come!

  -30-

EXTRA: Baseball history may be made elsewhere other than Land of Wrigley

For those of you who are absolutely convinced that it has to be the Chicago Cubs winning a championship this year – that there’s no way that fate and the cosmos could possibly permit any other outcome – here’s a grasp on reality.

Will it be Cleveland that gets to add a championship banner to its collection?

There were two other playoff games held Monday, with the Washington Nationals managing a victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers that puts them but one win away from advancing to the next round of National League playoffs – and closer to the first World Series appearance by a D.C. ball club in 83 seasons.
 

A World Series hero after leaving Chicago

LET ALONE THE only victory for a Washington team since 1924.

They’re not even alone in the trying-to-make-history category!

Because at about the same time that the Cubs were taking on the San Francisco Giants in the first inning of what they hope is the final game of this round of playoffs, the Cleveland Indians were managing to pull off the final inning of their 4-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox.

Thereby clinching this round of playoffs for the Indians; who haven’t had a World Series title since 1948. We don’t have to have a Chicago Cubs team in the World Series for it to have historic overtones this season.

Hall of Fame-bound, but first a World Series 'goat'

AND AT THE very least, the Red Sox’ defeat ensures we won’t get the Fenway/Wrigley ballpark series that some baseball fans fantasize about way too much for it to be healthy.

Of course, none of this is at all set in stone. A Washington team would have to get past the Cubs to advance, and the Indians will have to defeat the Toronto Blue Jays in order to win an American League championship.

Maybe we’re not even meant to have anything historic about this year. Maybe we’re destined for a Toronto/Los Angeles World Series.

A baseball brawl between ball clubs that think they’re long-suffering because they haven’t won a World Series since 1993 and 1988 respectively. The series that allowed Joe Carter and Kirk Gibson their moments of baseball immortality.

Will Capitol Hill scene get to celebrate a local championship in '16?

THEY’RE ALSO ONES that cause their own twinges of grief when viewed by Chicago baseball fans. For Carter was once a Cub whom some fans are convinced team should never have traded away. While Gibson’s home run came off former Cubs pitcher Dennis Eckersley.

Besides, any White Sox fan with sense knows that if there were really any sense of justice in the world of baseball, that ’93 American League pennant would have been flying over New Comiskey Park all these years instead of inside Skydome.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cubs jumped out to an early 3-0 lead as of when this commentary was written. Whether they’ll be able to hold it, or blow it and have to return for another game Tuesday in San Francisco will be seen.

Will this become year “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” loses relevance

I’m not a Chicago Cubs fan. In fact, I have to admit the only thing about the city’s National League franchise I find appealing is that Steve Goodman song.

And no, I don’t mean “Go Cubs, Go.” Which is about as insipid a lyric as ever crafted.

I’M ACTUALLY REFERRING to the early 1980s tune “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” which purports to tell the tale of the final moments of life of an aging man who spent his life in fruitless rooting for a Cubs team that didn’t embarrass itself, and actually brought a championship to Chicago.

Of course, it didn’t happen. The fan in the song wound up being cremated with his ashes spread at Wrigley Field – with the “prevailing 30 mile an hour southwest wind” blowing them over the left field wall and bleachers so he can, “come to my final resting place, out on Waveland Avenue.”

Which is kind of a touchingly truthful sentiment, if you think about it. But would that be a loss if this truly is the year that the Chicago Cubs wind up doing anything of significance – rather than finding yet another way to blow it come playoff time.

Because that’s the mode we’re in now, what with the Cubs managing to win a division title with Thursday night’s St. Louis Cardinals loss. Although the Cubs tried rewriting history Friday by doing the cliche'd champagne splash following a victory over the Milwaukee Brewers that came a day after the clinching actually occurred.

Cubs fans consider fantasy pennants ...

IT ACTUALLY REMINDS me of the 2000 season when the New York Yankees actually lost 15 of their 18 final ballgames. Yet because the Boston Red Sox managed to pick the identical time of the season to stink, the Yankees clinched a division title with a loss.

I suspect many Cubs fans are now fantasizing about a Yankees-like scenario – the Yankees went on to win in the playoffs and wound up winning the World Series that year. Which was an even bigger deal than usual because they got to whomp the New York Mets for the World Series championship title.

... of 1969, 1984 and 2003 ...

But then again, the Cubs don’t have Yankee aura or winning ways. Every time the Cubs try to feed off Yankee aura (Bobby Murcer as a ballplayer, Gene Michael and Lou Piniella as managers), Chicago Cubbie-ness manages to overcome success!

... to be more real than the one ...

Which makes me wonder if the smart-aleck I read on the Internet on Friday has it more correct. That person pointed out that the St. Louis Cardinals managed to win World Series titles in 2006 and 2011, even though in both years they failed to win a division title.

COULD IT HAPPEN again come 2016? Could this be the year the Cubs manage to blow it when it matters the most and the Cardinals manage to prevail yet again?

Because that would truly be in Cubbie-character. This is the team that, as Goodman put it, hasn’t won since, “the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.”

It is why I just can’t get all excited the way I’m seeing some Cubs fans already wetting their pants with glee, as though they think this year will go into the record books as some sort of championship season.

... that has flown over 35th/Shields for 11 years now

This may well be the big difference between the perception of baseball fans who root for Chicago’s two ball clubs. Cubs fans in their minds see those league pennants for 1969, 1984 and 2003 flying above the center field scoreboard.

WHITE SOX FANS still have the nightmare that they’re going to wake up someday and find that the 2005 World Series championship was somehow just a dream.

There are still several rounds of playoffs that need to be completed before we have a National League champion, which then will face off against the (likely superior) American League champs!

In fact, the way baseball is now set up with all these extra teams thrown into the playoff mix, it seems that the powers-that-be would just as soon see a lesser team actually win the whole thing.

71 years, and counting, since "the year we dropped the bomb on Japan."

Will the Chicago Cubs manage to use the remainder of the month to relax, try to prepare themselves for the pressure of post-season play? Or will they be one of these ball clubs who somehow let the lack of serious game activity throw them off-track, resulting in a first-round departure from the playoffs and continued choruses of the Goodman song?

  -30-

What does Cubs ‘Magic Number’ mean for those fans who could care less?

We’re at that point of the baseball season where teams that have played somewhat respectfully start thinking seriously about the chance that this year could be THE YEAR for their favorite ballclub.

 

Sox fans have had to fantasize about the past

A league championship! Perhaps even a World Series title. There are at least a dozen of the 30 major league ball clubs who are acting these days as though this is THE YEAR.

INCLUDED AMONGST THOSE dreamers are the perpetual fantasizers who follow the Chicago Cubs. Even though it has been 71 seasons since the National League championship banner last flew over the Lake View neighborhood (and 108 years since “Cubs” and “World Series champions” were tied together), we’re getting the talk.

Particularly in the form of the “magic number,” which is the number of Cubs wins and second place team losses needed for the Cubs to prevail with a first place finish for the 2016 season.

As of Sunday, that number was “28.” Which means they’re not on the verge of clinching anything in the next few days. But it is close enough that 2016 could wind up being just like 1984, 1989, 1998, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2015.

Years in which there was a Cubs playoff appearance but someone else won the rights to call themselves the championship team for the year.

SO IS 2016 destined to be THE YEAR for the Wrigley Field denizens. Or just another season in which they fall short?

Personally, I don’t really care. And I’m not alone.

 

That early season start seems like a century ago

For the reality of Chicago is that the character of our city’s baseball feelings is that they’re split between two ball clubs. There are those of us, myself included, who are going to feel apathy toward whatever the Cubs do.

In my case, it’s largely because I’m a fan of the American League and its ball clubs. Even if by chance the Cubs do win their first National League championship since 1945 and the rights to play the AL champion in the World Series, I’ll likely be rooting for the latter.

FOR THOSE PEOPLE who somehow think that’s disrespectful to Chicago or somehow petty, I’d say it’s only natural. I suspect it is the way many Cubs fans went about regarding the 2005 season when the Chicago White Sox managed to win their first American League championship in 46 seasons, then went on to perform many historic moments in beating the Houston Astros in the World Series that year.

There was that segment of Chicago that got all worked up and held that victory parade that stretched from U.S. Cellular Field through the South Side and into downtown. There also were other people who felt a big “ho hum” towards the event.

Which, if the Cubs do manage to accomplish something in 2016 (personally, I’m skeptical they will), is a sentiment that we will see repeated. Some of us will care. Others of us will already have moved on either to the Chicago Bears or to the 2017 season.

It’s just the character of Chicago – no matter how insufferable some Cubs fans get in believing that everybody on Planet Earth somehow cares what their favorite ballclub does.

IN FACT, I’LL be honest. There is a part of me that wouldn’t mind if the Cubs were able in 2016 to share in the feeling of what it is like to have a ball club that does something worthy of note.

 

The White Sox are 2-1 this season with me sitting in the stands. All photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Because I personally think the “lovable loser” mentality reflects badly upon Chicago as a whole. And while I’ll admit all of our city’s professional sports teams have had their eras of suckiness, it is largely the lengthy stretches of the Cubs that implants that image in the public’s head.

If the Cubs really do win something this year, we can finally move on and quit thinking there is something so special about a ball club that can never win a thing. Then we can get on to the ultimate argument-provoking debate for Chicago sports fans – who’d win a fantasy championship series between the ’05 White Sox (best in the American League that season) and ’16 Cubs?

Of course, anybody with sense could see Mark Buehrle pitching a complete-game shutout and catcher A.J. Pierzynski using his baseball “smarts” to pull off such a fantasy victory for the Sox.

  -30-

Bulls can keep their glory, not that they were ever in danger of losing it

It has been some 20 years since that season when the Chicago Bulls managed to set a record 72 victories in the regular season – a record that finally fell this year with the Golden State Warriors (that’s the Oakland, Calif.-area) managing to win 73 games.

 

Fell one win short of ultimate goal

Is it possible that these Warriors are better than the high-and-mighty Bulls teams that we had back in the 1990s – the one time that Chicago sports got to experience a taste of the kind of athletic glamour that New York Yankees fans expect routinely?

NAH!!!

It certainly isn’t going to be remembered as big as those teams led by the duo of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and also had characters like Dennis Rodman (what color would he wear his hair on any given night?) playing regularly.

The Warriors led by Stephen Curry (I have to confess, when I hear the name “Curry” it brings to my mind Eddy, the high school sensation from Thornwood High in South Holland who didn’t quite become the next Bulls superstar) may be able to claim to have won one more game than did those 1995-96 Bulls.

But those Bulls went on to be National Basketball Association champions for that season – and five others within that 1990s decade.

IN THE END, the Warriors fell Sunday night to the Cleveland Cavaliers. History will record these 73-win Warriors as merely a second-best team and NOT champions like the Cavaliers – led by LeBron James, the other high school sensation who turned out to be the elite player that sports fans thought Eddy Curry would be for the Bulls.

 

Still on top of the ultimate champion category

I don’t doubt that Golden State fans feel something special about this season that is now finished. Although I doubt anyone else will get all worked up over it.

For all I know, they will be quickly forgotten while basketball fans will debate for decades to come whether those 1990s Bulls were THE elite team of professional basketball.

That, and they’ll remember how Jordan himself was a Saturday Night Live guest (remember the sight of him in a grass skirt doing the hula dance with the Superfans cheering on his merits (Jordan was almost as sensational as Mike Ditka himself, to listen to those old comedy sketches).

 

Nobody would confuse him with Stephen

ALL OF THIS has come to a wrap-up, and I have to admit to feeling glad – in part because I think the professional basketball season stretches on far too long. It’s even more ridiculous playing NBA Finals games in late June than it is playing the World Series in the days leading up to Halloween.

We can now relegate the Curry Warriors vs. the Jordan Bulls debates to semi-drunken bar quarrels, and wonder how many times in the future the issue will lead to an outburst sensational enough that the cops will have to come in and break things up.

Because it just wasn’t a quarrel I cared to have all that often, and not just because I’m not much of a basketball fan.

Of course, the Chicagoan in me is going to find it difficult to ever have anyone challenge the significance of the Bulls back in that era.

SIX CHAMPIONSHIPS IN an eight-year time span is historic no matter what the sport.

 

One of Chicago's true sports characters

Although others will go on and on about the historic significance of Cleveland managing to come from as far behind as they were in the final round of the NBA Finals to actually win the whole thing.

Some will cry about Stephen Curry’s dream season falling one game short. While those people who think LeBron James is some snotty, arrogant punk will be upset to see him on yet another championship team.

And those of us with a Chicago rooting interest will wind up crying the loudest – wondering why the Bulls stink so much and when it will be their turn to win yet again.

  -30-

EXTRA: Cubs win at home? Not really; not yet no matter what fans say!

I’m having the same reaction now that I had when the Boston Red Sox won a World Series in 2013 and everyone was going on and on about the historic significance of the fact that the final game was at Fenway Park.

The last (and only) time a Chicago ball club won a World Series at their home ballpark came on Oct. 14, 1906 when the White Sox achieved victory at the old South Side Park just south of the current U.S. Cellular Field. And yes, that was the World Series where the Sox beat the 116-victory Chicago Cubs 4 games to two.

I thought the fact that Red Sox fans got to storm their own home field really didn’t matter all that much. The fact that it had been 95 years since that had last happened was no big deal.

I ACTUALLY LOOKED it up, and found that the Cleveland Indians haven’t won a World Series at their home field since 1920, while the Chicago White Sox only did it once – in 1906 when their final game against the Chicago Cubs was at the old South Side Park  (at what is now Pershing and Wentworth avenues).

And as for the Cubs? Their only two World Series victories (1907 and 1908, both times against the Detroit Tigers) came in Michigan, rather than the old West Side Grounds that is now the University of Illinois Medical Center.

They’ve never won a final game at home, to have fans tearing up the turf while ballplayers jump all over each other in a big pile before tearing off to the team clubhouse to douse each other with champagne and have the baseball commissioner present the team president with a rather uninspired-looking trophy.

That is the factual basis of the people going on and on saying that Tuesday was significant because the Cubs won their first postseason series at Wrigley Field – ever.

Chicago is long overdue for a World Series that doubles ...

THAT LITERALLY WAS the headline on the back page of the New York Post on Wednesday, along with a cutline saying that one-tine broadcaster Harry Caray would have been “proud” of the celebration Cubs fans conducted following their 6-4 victory Tuesday night that advances the Cubs to the final round of the National League playoffs against the winner of New York Mets/Los Angeles Dodgers.

That last sentence is what makes me think all of the hullaballoo over the Cubs’ victory is much adieu over nothing.

Cubs fans are going on and on as though they already have reached a historic achievement, when they really haven’t won a thing yet!

... as a City Series, to settle city supremacy for the 21st Century

All they have done to this point is match the same level of play they achieved in 2003 – when they made it to the final round of National League playoffs before losing to the then-Florida Marlins. Actually, made it to being within one game of winning that round – before all that Bartman nonsense crept its way into Cubs lore.

CONSIDER THAT IF the Cubs do lose to the New York/Los Angeles winner in the final playoff round that begins Saturday, history will record that the ’15 Cubs were no better than St. Louis, Pittsburgh or the New York/Los Angeles loser.

Nobody will think that the Cubs achieved something significant by winning the pompously-named “National League Division Series.” There won’t be an NLDS pennant flying over Wrigley Field next year.

The years 1945 (last National League championship) and 1908 (last World Series title) will still retain their significance. Going around acting as though your team has already won what matters is the best way possible to tempt fate and ensure that the baseball “gods” do wind up smiting the Wrigley Field scene for yet another year.

Besides, I can’t help but think that the hard-core of Cub fandom really cares where the final game of a championship season is played.

BACK IN 2005, the Chicago White Sox took their own championship dreams even though the division clincher (in Detroit), division series winner (in Boston), league championship (in Anaheim, Calif.) and World Series win (in Houston) ALL came on the road.

Lost last game of '06 series, yet still a Hall of Famer

I don’t think anybody seriously thinks less of that championship year – which was the first for a Chicago ball club in the life of anyone under age 60. Actually, that status will remain – even if the Cubs do manage to beat the New York/Los Angeles winner, then the best of the American League to win a World Series.

And as for White Sox fan-dom, their reaction if the Cubs do wind up prevailing this year will be something along the lines of, “It’s about time, ya losers!”

Then we can start wishing for a World Series that doubles as a City Series – so we can settle the White Sox/Cubs debate for the 21^st Century – just as that 1906 series (with the Cubs losing to the Sox four games to two) set things for the 20^th Century.

  -30-

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-

One down, three to go!

The Chicago Blackhawks gave us that come-from-behind victory earlier this week against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game One of the Stanley Cup finals.

Will this pennant become more obsolete?

Three more victories, and Chicago gets its third pro hockey championship in six years.

WHICH WOULD BE something of significance for Chicago sports fans. Considering that the Blackhawks have only five championships in their 80-something years of existence.

And before that 2010 title, the last Stanley Cup victory for the Blackhawks was back in 1961.

The point being that while the Blackhawks might be an “Original Six” franchise, they’re not exactly one with a significant winning tradition. Taking another championship title this year would make this era’s Blackhawks franchise the highlight of the franchise history.

Enough for us to forget Bobby Hull or Stan Mikita (and I don’t want to read any e-mailed gags about doughnut shops) or anyone else who played all those years ago.

CONSIDERING THAT CHICAGO sports don’t exactly have histories of winning (our sports franchises usually require fans to endure some pretty sucky ball teams), this is an era that will not be forgotten.

It’s not exactly on the same level as those Chicago Bulls teams that won two strings of three-straight-championships during the 1990s.

But they are teams that will make our sports fans think about ice and skating – even the fair-weather fans (I have to confess that none of the pro hockey teams I have seen include the Blackhawks; I’ve never seen a match of theirs in my life) who probably don’t comprehend much of what is happening on the ice.

Who's thinking about doughnuts?!?

Except that fights occasionally break out. And the Blackhawks seem to get whiny opponents from the south to play against – it makes me wish this year’s Stanley Cup final could have been a Chicago-New York Rangers match-up instead of the one we got!

SUCH AS NASHVILLE trying to restrict sales of tickets in their arena to local residents and Tampa Bay wanting to forbid anyone from wearing a Blackhawks jersey in their arena anywhere where it would be seen by a television camera.

Strangely enough, that hang-up seems to be common for a lot of sports teams based in cities that weren’t major league a half-century or so ago.

Which is something rather lame, if you think about it. What kind of place is so insecure that they have to create a phony image that the whole world revolves around themselves?

How will this cover be topped!?!

If the Lightning were really into the hang of things, they’d want to have Blackhawks faithful sitting in their stands, buying their beer and other overpriced concessions, then looking rather gloomy when their team lost.

WHICH MIGHT BE the reason I’m hoping there’s a Blackhawks victory Saturday night in Game Two.

That would set up a possibility for the Stanley Cup to be a four-game sweep, with victories Three and Four coming next week at the United Center.

Let a couple of Lightning fans show up in Chicago and find themselves to be an insignificant minority. So much so that Blackhawks fans won’t be bothered by what they choose to wear.

Although I have to admit to being curious t see how we’ll behave if we get a championship-winner in Chicago proper.

WILL OUR FANS wind up acting stupid and rioting to express our glee, as has happened in certain other cities across the country when their professional (or collegiate) teams came through on the athletic field (or turf or ice or wood, or whatever substance they happen to be playing on).

For those "fans" who can't comprehend what happens on the ice

Then, we can move on to trying to figure out just how far removed from championship quality our baseball and football franchises will be in ’15.

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