Now that the easy stuff is over…yeah, all the Cubs had to do was win the biggest division in baseball, one that for most of the season had the teams with the National League’s three best records in it, all while playing two months without their leftfielder, patching center together with guys released by non-playoff teams, losing their closer for a month, their ace for a month and enduring long slumps from their first baseman and right fielder.  Oh, and they did it with a rookie catcher and a starting pitcher who hadn’t started a game in six years.

And all they did was put up the best record in the National League, clinch their division with more than a week to go and only twice–for a week after the All-Star Game and for the first week of September–play poorly enough to make anybody doubt them.

The 2008 Cubs have done an awful lot.

And they haven’t done squat yet.

How’d they do it?  They did it by taking a good team, but certainly not a great team, last year and adding to it.  Kosuke Fukudome has gone in the tank of late, but his huge early season play certainly helped the Cubs avoid digging themselves a hole they’d spend the whole season trying to claw out of.  

Last year, when Michael Barrett was floundering as the Cubs’ catcher, experts were telling us how hard Lou Piniella is on catchers and how hard it would be to find one who runs the game the way Lou likes it.  That was true.  Except for the fact that the perfect guy for the job was on the Cubs’ 40 man roster the whole time.

When Geovany Soto showed up as a September call up last year, it took him about a week to convince Lou he was worth a shot.  By the end of the season, Geovany was getting more starts than Jason Kendall.  When the playoffs came around he got two of the three starts and was one of the few Cubs who didn’t wilt on the big stage.

Lou had seen enough.  The Cubs didn’t spend any time in the offseason looking for a catcher.  They just gave the keys to Geo and let him drive.  All he did was make himself the starting catcher in the All-Star Game, lock down the rookie of the year award, and most importantly, earn the respect of every one of his teammates. 

All of us doubted Ryan Theriot could play shortstop every day.  And some of us still cringe when a ball is hit near him, but you can’t deny that he had a terrific season.  He’s hit at or above .300 all year, his on base average has been excellent and he’s the least of their problems.  He also keeps Ronny Cedeno off the field, which is always a plus.

You can list the shortcomings of the 2007 Cubs, and find a 2008 answer to all of them.

The 2007 Cubs were too impatient at the plate.

The 2008 Cubs led the league in on base average, walks and runs scored.

The 2007 Cubs had abysmal outfield defense with Jock Jones, Cliff Floyd and Matt Murton heavily involved.

The 2008 Cubs have gold glove caliber defenders in center and right, and while Alfonso Soriano plays the outfield like a distracted t-ball player, once he’s got the ball in his hands (either by catching it or waiting for it to stop rolling) he’s a threat to throw out anybody foolish enough to run on him.

The 2007 Cubs didn’t have much in their rotation behind Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly.

The 2008 Cubs added two pitchers as good, or better than those two in Ryan Dempster and Rich Harden.  Even when Rich Hill went crazy in St. Louis, the rotation hardly skipped a beat.

The 2007 Cubs bullpen was an adventure at best.

The 2008 Cubs?  Well, it’s still an adventure, but when you get to the eighth, things get awfully tough on the opponents.  Carlos Marmol’s filthy in the eighth, and Kerry Wood might make you sweat it, but he’s 32-38 in save chances and the more often he pitches, the better he throws, which is a surprise given his past arm troubles.

When you look at the likely playoff teams in the National League–the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets or Milwaukee Brewers–the Cubs are the best of the bunch.  They’ll have home field throughout the NL playoffs, they’ll have better starting pitching, they’ll have the deepest lineup.  

There’s a reason this team hasn’t won a World Series in 100 years.  For the vast, vast majority of those years they haven’t been good enough to win one.  Only one team in the past 63 years has had real, season-long championship chops, the 1984 Cubs.  

The 1989 Cubs had a punchers’ chance, the 2003 Cubs got hot at the right time, but other than those years?  Nothing.

Most of the time, the best team wins.  For all these years, the Cubs haven’t had the best team.  Doesn’t make it impossible, but it makes it pretty unlikely.  Unlikely enough that 100 years becomes a reality.

Until this year?  Who knows.  But it’s nice to have the kind of a chance that you don’t have to talk yourselves into.

For once.