Because we’re Cubs fans we hold out hope even when things are bleakest. Because we’re Cubs’ fans we are always disappointed. Every Cubs season in 97 years has ended with disappointment. This one was no different.
But with five weeks left and the Cubs completely void of hope, we would normally turn to the Bears for comfort. But two things have complicated that.
1) The Bears season probably ended with Rex Grossman holding his leg two Fridays ago.
2) Somebody has to beat the freakin’ Cardinals and White Sox so we can enjoy a peaceful winter.
So that means our baseball season’s not over. We’ve got to find somebody who can help us out. That’s not going to be easy.
While the Cubs are giving up three run homers to guys like Jorge Piedra (guh), other teams are actually throwing themselves headlong into the mediocre scrum that is the NL Wild Card. Over in the American League the Wild Card race is getting cozy, too.
So if we’re going to find a surrogate team for the next two months, they’re going to have to meet several criteria.
1) We must not already hate them.
Since our whole goal is to find a team that can play spoiler to the Cardinals and/or White Sox, it has to be somebody we don’t already have a full on hatred for.
That eliminates several teams.
Houston Astros: We still owe Roy Oswalt a fastball to the ribs, and we’ll never forgive Fat Lance for his pretend beaning last year. So screw them, and their gay pitching staff.
New York Mets: Somebody should set Shea Stadium on fire, with them in it.
Florida Marlins: Bastards.
San Diego Padres: They think we’ve forgotten 1984. We’ll never forget it.
LA Dodgers: How can you like the Dodgers? How is that possible? They did take Todd Hundley off our hands, but they’ll have to do the same with Dusty before we even consider forgiving them for being themselves.
San Francisco Giants: As if 1989 wasn’t bad enough, if they had beaten the Marlins in 2003 we could have swept their tired ass and won the pennant. Plus, I hear they’re just a bunch of wild-swinging Carribbeans, oh and they have no more chance than the Cubs do, anyway.
Arizona Diamondbacks: We hate the announcers worse than the team.
2. They have to deserve our attention.
Washington Nationals: They’ve had a team for like four months, screw them.
Atlanta Braves: Every year they make the playoffs and since 1996 they haven’t done a goddamn thing with it. Plus, they have Chip.
Anaheim Angels: They just won the World Series two years ago. Screw ’em.
Minnesota Twins: You’d like to root for them, but their same fans are Vikings fans. So screw them, too.
Baltimore Orioles: They took Sammy off the Cubs’ hands, but they’re doomed.
Toronto Blue Jays: They’re in it about as much as the Cubs are. Not very.
Boston Red Sox: I found them annoying when they were losing, winning hasn’t made that change.
New York Yankees: No thanks.
So who does that leave?
Oakland A’s
Cleveland Indians
Philadelphia Phillies
Let’s take them case-by-case.
Oakland: They became the first team in more than 100 years to drop to 15 games under .500 at any point in a season and then come back to be more than 15 games over. That’s impressive. Plus, they’re fun to watch. They’ve got good pitching, they are the anti-Cubs when it comes to developing players and pitchers and they could use the fans. The stands are so empty most of the time you aren’t sure whether it’s an A’s game or a Carrottop concert.
Cleveland: If ever there was a mirror-image for the Cubs it’s the Indians. Or it was the Indians. Then they went and got good in the ’90s. They’re easy to root for because they have a bunch of home-grown players, they have Jason Dubois (well, he spends most of his time in Buffalo, but still…), they have a culturally insensitive mascot and they are in the same division as the White Sox.
Philadelphia: When I was a kid the Phillies were great. They had assholes like Pete Rose and Joe Morgan and Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton and even that loathesome Tim McCarver. But they also had guys like Bake McBride and Garry Maddox and Manny Trillo, you know, guys you could like. Then they sent half their team to the Cubs for the 1984 season including some hack named Ryne Sandberg. They’ve been around forever and they’ve only won one World Series, which actually makes the Cubs look kind of good (not really, we’re grasping for straws.) They have a manager with half a colon, the last Cubs’ 20 game winner, the last good Cubs’ leadoff hitter and a former Cubs’ catcher who once lost a game when he tried to score on a wild pitch and was out by (I’m not kidding) 45 feet.
OK, so who’s it gonna be? Which bandwagon do we hop on?
We’ll still follow the Cubs (because if we could stop, we’d have done it long ago), but we’ll throw our support behind them and they’ll no doubt flop and disappoint us anyway.
The A’s and Indians have one big disadvantage. Do we really want to have to watch American League baseball? Besides, the White Sox have already regressed back to the .500 team we thought they’d be all along, and while they could still catch lightning in a bottle in the playoffs (because, theoretically any team can) they have little shot of beating the Angels or Red Sox and if the A’s get in as the Wild Card and play the Sox in round one, the Sox are done before the playoffs even start.
So here comes the big question. Can we root for the Phillies for two months? Is it going to be physically possible?
This is a team that went 4-2 against the Cubs during the regular season, but would have gone 2-4 if Michael Barrett and LaTroy Hawkins hadn’t put the finishing touches on two of the three most gut-wrenching losses of the Cubs’ season. (Losing the five-run lead in Cincinnati, including the inning where the first two guys hit doubles and the Cubs didn’t score, has to be top three someplace.)
The Phillies have some drawbacks of course. They spent the late ’70s and most of the ’80s kicking the Cubs’ asses. They won a pennant with Mitch Williams AND Danny Jackson. They have the same fans who got all happy when Hugh Douglas did his Charles Martin routine on Jim Miller in the playoffs after the 2001 season.
But they have some pluses. Their leftfielder has seen soccer hottie Heather Mitts naked. They have the aforementioned referenced Kenny Lofton, Jon Lieber and Todd Pratt. They actually use a roster spot on Endy Chavez, a man of whom Frank Robinson once spoke, “When your leadoff hitter is Endy Chavez, it’s like starting every game with one out.” And Frank was Endy’s manager at the time. They have Ugy Urbina, a man that had the Cubs been willing to trade one more prospect to Texas for, would have likely meant a pennant for the Cubs in 2003, and not the Marlins. They have Billy Wagner and we’ve all been openly pining for him for years.
Plus, they are the team most likely to act like the Cubs down the stretch. A three game lead with three to play is not any safer with these Phillies than it would be with the Cubs. But in the end, they’re not the Braves or the Mets or the Astros or the Expos…or whatever. They are what the Cubs have forced us to turn to. They are the least objectional alternative.
And we’re about to doom them by giving them our support.
Because with 38 games left to play the Cubs are 6.5 games out of the playoffs with SIX teams ahead of them. That’s the equivalent of being 12 games behind one team with 38 to go. I’m sure Stephen Hawking could come up with a scenario where the Cubs can still make the playoffs, but logically looking at the schedules of the six teams ahead of the Cubs, there’s almost no chance for the Cubs to make the playoffs even if they play well, and they don’t seem interested in doing that.
So we’re hitching our wagons to the Phillies from now until the end of their season (which could be soon if our support does them as much good as the Cubs).
