MEETME IN ST. LOUIS
Sizzling Cubs get a chance to finally vanquish their tormentors— the Cardinals— in NLDS
PITTSBURGH—“It’s the World Series tonight, it really is,’’ Joe Maddon said before the wild-card game. “It’s the Super Bowl. It’s all that.’’
It wasn’t any of that. But we knew what he meant.
Win and move on. Lose and be done. And away we go! St. Louis, be ready. The Cubs bandwagon is on its way, and halfcrazed fans who have been waiting since the Ark floated away are piling aboard. Cubs vs. Cardinals? Now we’re talking Super Bowl. Or as close as you get before the World Series.
Jake Arrieta, the Cubs’ winning pitcher Wednesday night at PNC Park, is so aflame that if he were a prairie fire, he’d have scorched his way to the Atlantic by now.
Kyle Schwarber? Ice buckets, please. Dexter Fowler? Dip tank. But it was only one game, this 4-0 victory over the Pirates. It’s over. It might not have been fair, a one-game playoff between the teams with the second- and third-best records in baseball.
‘‘It doesn’t necessarily determine the better team tonight,’’ Maddon said beforehand. But the one-and-done silliness is hot-stove-league discussion now.
Because on we go, and this is what we’ve all been waiting for, isn’t it? The Cubs against the Baddest Team on Earth? Make that the Baddest Team in the Solar System. Hyperbole comes fast these days.
And not just in Chicago. The whole baseball world has to have been wondering when the men in blue would produce a real challenge to the men in red.
The Cardinals have become the nemesis of the Cubs, an army of small-town Darth Vaders with a system from the Galactic Empire, winning again and again in taunting monotony, something that has made the National League Central a near-joke and hasn’t helped the Cubs become more than a compilation of curses.
Finally, we have a best-of-five series to see if the power structure has changed. To see if the globe has tilted toward the thirsty and starving.
Nobody expected the Cubs to be this good, but here they are.
And if you look at what’s trending, it is this young ballclub. Their 24-game turnaround from last season is the best in baseball. Their 46 wins in the last 65 games is the best in baseball.
Could this be the worm turning? Make that the caterpillar. Because somewhere within the Cubs’ dismal history, there must be a butterfly ready to hatch.
This series rivals the Bears against the Packers for all the marbles. Let’s face it: Don’t the Dodgers or Mets— the NL Championship Series possibilities — seem like easier foes than the Cardinals?
St. Louis has won 90 or more games 10 times since 2000. This year, they had a league-best 100 wins. Everybody on their roster has been injured, it seems. And none of it has mattered. Onward marches the enemy.
Somebody said our city would calm down after this desperation win. But that’s impossible. The hyperventilating you hear is Cubs fans starting to think something is in the offing..
It might have taken five years of being wretched— to go with many, many years of being forlorn — but the Cubs now have Arrieta, Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Starlin Castro and all those kids, and you never know.
Do we dare thank Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts and management guys such as Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer?
Nah, let’s hold off until the next round. OK?
For now, it’s enough to think the Cubs are actually going to St. Louis to do something more than gaze at the arch. They’re too young to choke, too good to fold. Oh, and one more thing. The Cardinals are used to this postseason stuff, and they know the Cardinal Way will get them into it again. For the Cubs, and their legion of fans, it’s seize the damned cursed moment right here.
Next year may not be better. This is the perfect time to get that monkey— and the goat and his pal, the cat— off our backs without drawing more blood. On to the Mississippi! Follow me on Twitter @ricktelander.