John Shea: Long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans finally see their lovable losers have a shot to win it all.
The Cubs are no longer just the Cubs.
They’re the anti-Cubs, the never-expected-to-be-here Cubs, the are-you-kiddin’-me Cubs.
The World Series-bound Cubs.
For the first time in 71 years, the National League pennant belongs to the team everyone identified as the lovable losers. Until now. Now the Cubs will play in their first World Series since 1945 and try to win their first World Series since nineteen-friggin’-oh-eight.
Six years before Wrigley Field opened. Eleven years before the White Sox turned into the Black Sox. Twentythree years before Ernie Banks was born. Thirty-nine years before baseball integrated. Fifty years before the Giants and Dodgers moved west.
The Cubs got to this position because they beat the Dodgers 5-0 in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Saturday night.
Because they pooh-poohed the Killer B curses: billy goats, black cats and Bartman.
And because Clayton Kershaw is no Madison Bumgarner.
Oh, Kershaw is better than anyone in the regular season, considering his four ERA titles, three Cy Young Awards and MVP trophy. But in the postseason, Kershaw is no match for Bumgarner, the Giants’ ace whose postseason ERA is 2.11 — 0.25 in five World Series games.
Kershaw’s postseason ERA is 4.55, and he had plenty of rest and no excuses when he opposed Kyle Hendricks in Game 6. He needed a Bumgarner-like outing to force a Game 7 but coughed up five runs (four earned) and surrendered extrabase hits in each of his five innings.
Kershaw got all the pub coming in, but the baseball world seemed to forget about Hendricks, the closest thing to the Greg Maddux of his era who was passed over by teams his entire life because he lacked a power arm.
Hendricks’ dream as a kid was pitching at Stanford, but he was ignored so he pitched at Dartmouth. He got passed over in the draft, too, taken by the Rangers in the eighth round in 2011, only to be traded to the Cubs a year later.
Fast forward to 2016, and Hendricks won an ERA title and the Cubs’ biggest game in decades, the game that clinched a date in the World Series with the Indians, who have their own celebrated drought, titleless since 1948.
A once-hapless sports town, Cleveland is four wins from becoming Title Town, the Indians hoping to stand side by side with LeBron James’ Cavaliers. It’s 1948 versus 1908 in a competition of wait ’til next years. For one long-suffering franchise, next year is here.
The Indians are managed by Terry Francona, who teamed with Theo Epstein on the 2004 Red Sox, who won their first World Series since 1918. Epstein’s now running the Cubs, and he and Francona are on different ends of the drought-busting stage.
With apologies to the Indians, the Cubs know a lot more about failure. Some teams have a bad year. The Cubs have had a bad century. In 2004, the Red Sox lifted the Curse of the Bambino, and now the Cubs will try to lift the Curse of the Billy Goat.
Suddenly, Steve Bartman is off the hook — the poor guy in the front row whose reach knocked a ball from Moises Alou’s grasp the previous time the Cubs were in an NLCS Game 6 (2003), somehow turning momentum in the favor of the Marlins, who overcame a three-run deficit and won the series, then the World Series.
The Cubs were five outs from the World Series when Bartman got in Alou’s way. With five outs remaining Saturday, Joe Maddon got booed for pulling Hendricks, who gave up singles on his first and final pitches and nothing in between.
Aroldis Chapman induced a double-play grounder and breezed through the ninth, and a wild and wacky Wrigleyville nearly drowned itself in tears because the Cubs are going to the World Series.