There’s an eerie nostalgic feeling surrounding the Chicago Cubs these days, and unfortunately it’s not the 1908 championship feeling. Rather, the Cubs are hurtling toward a 1969-esque meltdown.
With the Houston Astros and Florida Marlins surging, not to mention the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres hanging around, the struggling Cubs’ playoff hopes were already on life support.
Then the lowly Montreal Expos came to Wrigley field and took two of three, including an embarrassing five-hit shut-out at the hands of Scott Downs, who entered the game with a 7.11 ERA.
Quite frankly, it’s time to panic.
Back in June, Cub fans started to panic a little prematurely. Sure, Kerry Wood and Mark Prior were injured, Sammy Sosa threw his back out with what must have been a wicked sneeze, and closer Joe Borowski was shelved with shoulder problems, but it was early in the season and there was no reason to be gravely concerned. No need to fall to the Red Sox’s Chicken Little-like “the sky is falling” antics just yet.
Well, now the team is pretty much healthy, and the wins still aren’t pouring in. In fact, the Cubs are muddling around in mediocrity; since the middle of August, they have only been playing .500 ball.
Yeah, I realize that the Cubs are only half a game out of the wild card right now, but the guillotine seems poised to fall, severing the Cubs from their playoff dreams. That and I’ve been a Cubs fan way too long to expect anything short of disaster.
Remember when the Cubs were the sexy choice to win the World Series? Everyone wanted a chance to crown the Cubs as the team to beat in the National League. The city of Chicago got caught up in all the hype with expectations higher than they’d seen in the Windy City since 1969.
Unfortunately, this season’s end results may be just as spectacularly awful as in 1969, when the Cubs blew a 9.5 game lead in a little over a month’s time. Sure, the “Miracle Mets” played well down the stretch, but the “Choking Cubs” gave away the pennant when they dropped 17 of their final 25 games.
Well, hold on to your seats, because the Cubs appear to be on the precipice of another monumental collapse.
Prior and Wood haven’t really returned to last season’s dominant form, and Sosa has been anything but good down the stretch. The hitters can’t sustain a rally, and the defense lets the pitching down way too frequently. Even when things do go well throughout the first seven or eight innings, the bullpen seems happy to blow the lead. All signs are pointing toward 1969 all over again.
The thing that worries me the most is the schedule. It is just so soft with almost all of the remaining games coming against the bottom-feeders in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York. It sets up as a huge let-down if the Cubs blow the wild card against teams like that, and it has always been the team’s modus operandi to have things fall apart in such spectacular fashion.
If the past series against the Expos is any indication, it could get real ugly.
With the effective way the teams around the Cubs are playing, it is no surprise the number of ways they can find to lose a game, whether it is a shutout at the hands of some no-name pitcher, an error-filled defensive disaster, or a bullpen flameout as the Cubs watch their late-inning lead evaporate.
On paper the Cubs’ offense looks like it should be potent. Even statistically the Cubs are one of the best teams in the National League (they lead the NL in home runs and are seventh in run scores). In reality, though, the runs just don’t come consistently enough.
The Cubs just don’t play smart baseball. They don’t advance runners, they rarely pay attention on the base-paths, and if they aren’t hitting home runs, they aren’t scoring runs. That is a big problem in Wrigley Field when the wind is blowing in.
Cubs’ fans can try to blame the team’s woes on a billy goat, the Sports Illustrated cover picture, or a poor dork who happened to do what any fan would have done when a foul ball came his way. Truly the blame should be placed squarely on the players who have consistently shown baseball incompetence with their oft-inept play.
The fact is, most of the Cubs’ problems are simply problems of concentration. If the guys on the field would think once in awhile, they could improve their fortunes ten-fold. The team’s whole attitude needs adjusting.
One of the worst examples of the Cubs’ lackadaisical playing is in their base running. Too often a soft fly ball drifts into the outfield while a man on first is scampering toward second, seemingly unaware of where the ball is. The easy double play that ensues takes the Cubs right out of the inning.
Another problem has been the hitters’ refusal to act on the situation. With the bases loaded and nobody out, why swing for the fences? Make contact, try to hit the ball in the air if possible, but for god’s sake, don’t swing so hard that there is no danger of actually hitting the ball.
Defensively, things aren’t much better. Too often the Cubs simply don’t make smart plays. They miss cut-off throws allowing runners to move up. They toss balls around the infield with reckless abandon. Sometimes the smart play is no play. Just hold onto the damn ball and don’t make it worse. The mistakes are killing Ron Santo; just listen to him groan on the radio broadcasts with each avoidable mistake.
I want the Cubs to win, I really do, but game after game, something happens to remind me that this team is wandering down the long and winding road of heartbreak. Chances are, the Cubs will not fall from the wild-card race until the final weekend of the season; it just wouldn’t be dramatic enough otherwise.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the year that the Cubs finally break their losing cycle, but more than likely it will be “wait ’til next year.”
