Someone apparently took a bat to a pipe on his way out of the visiting dugout at Dodger Stadium the night of Oct. 4, occasioning a minor flood. Though it happened just minutes after the home team swept Chicago in the National League division series, and even though the club gladly picked up the tab, there’s no way it was one of the Cubs.
In three games against the Dodgers, they proved they couldn’t hit anything.
There’s more than one way to measure futility, of course, but few better times of the year to do it. Once the World Series ends, the complaining inevitably begins. Fans in the pro sports town that didn’t win it start counting backward to the last time they did. If that isn’t painful enough, they throw in the football, basketball and hockey teams. Add them altogether and at least your town has won something: the title of Loserville.
rk home. And talk about dimming memories: At the rate the current 49ers are disintegrating, it could be decades before their fans see anything like the dynasty that claimed its last Lombardi Trophy in 1994. Factor in the NBA Warriors and NHL Sharks and it’s still only 54 seasons total.
So let’s remember: While Chicago ranks only 10th among the 13 towns that have teams in all four pro sports, nobody’s got nothin’ on Cub fans. The start of next season will mark 101 years that followers of the real life’s Bad News Bears have been wandering in the wilderness of blown chances and lost opportunities.
Since the calendar of the new century turned over, the Red Sox and even the hated cross-town White Sox ended World Series droughts of 86 and 88 years, respectively, and two other franchises, the Diamondbacks and Angels, won their first. The late-arriving Marlins won their second. Who could blame Cub fans for believing this would be the year their unofficial motto – “Wait ’til next year!” – was going to be retired?
with the best team in baseball, during the regular season, anyway, when the postseason rewards the hottest.
That’s how Philadelphia beat Milwaukee, Los Angeles and finally Tampa Bay. Their bats came to life while the Rays’ were still stirring – especially run-producers Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena – plus a few of the hunches that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel played were sharp enough to win the World Series of Poker, let alone baseball.
The post-mortems filling the message boards on Cubs-related Web sites are still grousing about topics that were debated for most of the season: whether $14 million-dollar man Alfonso Soriano should have batted in the leadoff spot and $7 million Japanese import Kosuke Fukudome – especially since both were never colder than when heading into the postseason.
While the threats to boycott opening day come next season aren’t new, either, Cub fans may be madder than usual. More than a few of them have been holding a grudge against the ballclub longer than the Rays have been in existence, and they haven’t even sniffed the World Series since 1945.
Game 1, all the fight seemed to leak out of the Cubs.
What Piniella needs to make clear when pitchers and catchers report to spring training next season is something the guy who busted up the plumbing on his way out has yet to learn: That the best time to take extra batting practice is before the game – not after.
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org
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