These aren’t your father’s Chicago Cubs. The evidence of this has never been clearer than it was in the National League Wild Card game. There have been plenty of bad memories, even recently, that have left a bad taste in the mouth of the North Side faithful: an Alex Gonzalez error at shortstop, the injuries that rendered Mark Prior and Kerry Wood into shells of their former selves, and even a fan doing what any of us would have done when he reached for a ball, unintentionally rendering a potential play by Moises Alou dead. Times have changed. An improbable run that turned into a 97 win regular season by a young, uber-talented core gave the Cubbie die-hards reason for cautious optimism. Things changed on Wednesday night. These Cubs weren’t perfect. They’re still young and there WILL be growing pains; but for every minor slip up and every Pirate that reached scoring position, the Cubs somehow seemed to find a way to recover. Cautious optimism has turned into real confidence.
The Cubs have almost always had a big bat or two in their line-up. I, for one, grew up watching the likes of Fred McGriff, Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez, and Slammin Sammy Sosa hitting the long ball out onto the Waveland. In their respective tenures with Chicago, these men were the faces of the franchise; no easy task for anyone. The Cubs, even at their lowest, have one of the most loyal, rabid fan-bases in all of sports, and the task of carrying the franchise on one’s back could break anyone. Even one of the greatest players in franchise history, Sammy Sosa, was eventually broken by the fans’ expectations. In a season filled with the highest of hopes, young men like Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant haven’t shied away from the lofty expectations; they’ve embraced them by having two of the best offensive seasons we’ve seen from a pair of Cubs in a long time.
The last time the Cubs had a 1-2 punch at the top of their rotation like they have now in Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester was 2003. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood had carried the Cubs to within five outs of making the World Series. These two, along with the failings of manager Dusty Baker, couldn’t get the job done. Mark Prior’s and Kerry Woods’ careers were cut short by a myriad of injuries, and most of the blame for that can be placed on Baker for riding his pitchers too hard all season. Prior never lived up to the potential he showed; that’s not the case with someone like Jake Arrieta. It’s not enough that Arrieta’s a stone cold assassin on the mound; he’s a general leading his young troops into battle.
I’ve never seen a team that’s as confident as they are hungry in the twenty-seven years I’ve been watching baseball. There’s a good chance that this team still has some significant growing pains to go through, but it’s not often you see a transformation like this one during the course of one season. These kids went from a team expected to win 83-84 games to a team that no one wants to meet in a playoff series. Usually, a team needs to be knocked down a few times before they can rise up. If that’s the case with these Cubs… that’s fine. For once, as Cubs fans, we can say, “Wait until next year” and have it hold real meaning. I’ve grown up with this team disappointing me over and over again. My grandfather was one of the biggest Cubs fans I’ve ever met and he passed without ever seeing his beloved Cubbies win the big one. Maybe this year is “next year.” The way these Cubs have evolved this season is unlike anything we’ve ever seen; they’re no longer baseball’s lovable losers. Maybe this is the year the decades of disappointment finally fade away. After all, these aren’t your father’s Chicago Cubs.
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