National Post (National Edition)
Cubs hope to defy history as they head home
World Series drought goes back to 1945
LOS A NGELES • It took 13 years, and of course it would be an unlucky number. These are the Chicago Cubs, after all, and no omen is too trivial. Not with that triple-digit streak of seasons without a World Series title, anyway.
Thirteen years ago, the Cubs returned to Wrigley Field for Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, leading the Florida Marlins three games to two. We know how that turned out. The pennant slipped away, the misery continued. The Cubs have mostly been bad since, and when they were good, they flopped in October.
Now they are back at the precipice, poised for a celebration decades in the making. The Cubs have not even reached the World Series since 1945, with Phil Cavarretta, Stan Hack and Harry (Peanuts) Lowrey. One more win and they will be there again.
“We’re not going to run away from anything,” manager Joe Maddon said after Thursday’s 8-4 victory over the Dodgers in Game 5 of this NLCS. “It’s within our reach now. But I do want us to go after it as though — hate to say it — but Saturday. Let’s just go play our Saturday game and see how it falls.”
This particular Saturday will be tougher than most. The Cubs will face Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in baseball, who shut them out for seven innings in Game 2. If the Cubs lose, they would face Rich Hill on Sunday. Hill blanked the Cubs for six innings in Game 3.
The Cubs have appealing options, too. Kyle Hendricks, who had the majors’ lowest ERA (2.13) in the regular season, starts Game 6, followed by Jake Arrieta in a possible Game 7. Then again, the Cubs lined up Mark Prior and Kerry Wood for Games 6 and 7 against the Marlins in 2003, and could not win.
The ghoulish events of those nights just might flash in the minds of Cubs fans before Saturday night. There is no need to dwell on it here, except to say, for the sake of accuracy, that history picked the wrong villain. Nobody would remember the name Steve Bartman if Alex Gonzalez, the Cubs’ shortstop, had turned a double-play to end the fateful eighth inning with a 3-1 lead in Game 6.
Cubs fans, rightly, might be conditioned to expect the worst. David Ross, the veteran catcher, said the players must feed off the crowd’s energy on Saturday without absorbing its anxiety. He repeated his winning line that a Cubs championship would be the holy grail of sports.
“You win a World Series in Chicago and, I mean, that’s the tops right now,” said Ross, who has done it in Boston. “I think as a competitor, you want to be on the biggest stage unless you’re scared. If you’re scared, you don’t want to be. But we don’t have any dudes in here scared.”
The Cubs proved their mettle in the last two games at Dodger Stadium. They entered Game 4 trailing in the series and lugging an 18-inning scoreless streak, the longest in their tortured post-season history. For a team that spent all but one day of the regular season in first place — and earned eight more victories than any other team in the majors — it was a pivotal moment.
When Kershaw is on, there is really no answer to his devastating mix of fastballs, sliders and curves. Whichever Kershaw shows up Saturday, the Cubs relish the challenge.
“Like Ric Flair: ‘ To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best,’ ” Rizzo said, loosely quoting the pro wrestler. “And it’s no different. Who we’ve had to go through to get to this point is huge.”
But these Cubs still have not scored off Kershaw or Hill in the series. And their ancestors saddled them with a rotten legacy in games like this: six losses in a row (in 1984 and 2003) with a chance to clinch the pennant, leading to that streak of 71 years without one.