“This is just the first step”, Maddon said before the Cardinals lost. It’s nearly to the point where it drives you insane, like, let’s go! This season has been one of the weirder ones in recent memory with twists and turns occurring all over the league, such as the New York Yankees being sellers at the trade deadline, while the Chicago Cubs were buyers. Only now they do, at old Fenway over the weekend. As the best team in baseball during the regular season, they will be the favorites to win the World Series, just as they were in April, just as they were as far back as December, with odds as short as we’ve seen for any postseason team since the Yankees’ dynasty.
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With two out in the inning – and after Brewers center fielder Keon Broxton launched a solo home run to center – Russell, on a ground ball off the bat of third baseman Hernan Perez, threw up the line toward first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who couldn’t catch the ball. Suddenly Sanchez and his teammates have played as if they didn’t care that Brian Cashman, the team’s general manager, had traded everything except some of the plaques in Monument Park at the end of July. But a weak second tier crop has had them within at least a few games of the last wild card all season. And they definitely will celebrate after Friday’s game. That’s about as close as I can imagine it’s like (to pitch in the playoffs). The Cubs decided not to hang around the clubhouse to await the Cardinals’ outcome, instead choosing to wait another day to celebrate. They are definitely hoping Stephen Strasburg can come back at some point this season though.
“Could we possibly lose our minds twice in the same year?”
You have the Indians playing the way they’ve played. They had not won a game this season at Wrigley Field in six previous tries and starting pitcher Jimmy Nelson never had beaten the Cubs (0-6, 3.59 earned run average in 11 previous starts).
And guess what? That is just the AL. But with Kershaw and Rich Hill, they are as fragile as is Strasburg.
The Cubs are 93-53, 40 games above.500 and the best record in baseball. Just look at the Wild Card leaders right now. You have the Cardinals, who have been as much of a class machine in this generation as the Giants have been. “The 25 games is not 162 games and that’s what this team over here (the Cubs) have done”. But keep in mind: The Cubs went 7-0 against the Mets previous year and then were swept four games in the NLCS. That’s what happened previous year against the Mets. Jacob deGrom has been hurt, and less than he was a year ago. “The situation we had tonight, where we could have clinched, but the vibe and the way the fans were and the guys around the clubhouse today, that was a lot of fun”. We don’t honor 162 any more; we honor the tournament, and we do so in the face of all the evidence showing that 162 is the better test of a baseball team. That means the Cubbies, trying to win their first World Series since Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States.
If the Cubs manage to win the World Series, it will end one of the longest title droughts in the history of professional sports. But he would be close enough.
Pro football is big, huge, on Thursday and Sunday and Monday night. College football, even with its own games on weekday nights, still exists in the wonderful and mythical place that the great Dan Jenkins has always called Saturday’s America. Dodgers at Yankees on Tuesday night. No team in baseball holds as commanding of an advantage as Chicago’s 17-game lead over the Cardinals. And Justin Verlander is back in Detroit.
Pittsburgh’s first seven runs all came from homers.
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Maybe you are getting my drift here. Football season is still baseball season.
