Imrem: Why not a big, wild Chicago Cubs declaration?
Being first in journalism is first, while accuracy has slipped to second.
So MBC — the Mike Broadcasting Company — studied exit polls Sunday in Wrigley Field and as CEO I'm declaring the Cubs the Second Wild-Card Champions of the National League of America.
Of course, remember that I gave the presidency to Dukakis over the first of many Bushes in 1988 and to Goldwater over the one and only LBJ in 1994.
More relevant, I had the Cubs winning the NLCS after two games of the best-of-five in '84 and after four games of the best-of-seven in '03.
You know how those turned out, so, no, my declarations aren't always correct.
But you can't be any more reluctant to keep throwing high and tight predictions than Jake Arrieta was fastballs after hitting Nori Aoki in the helmet Sunday afternoon.
Arrieta went on to complete 7⅔ shoutout innings in a 2-0 victory that enabled the Cubs to sweep the four-game series over the Giants.
No wonder I was ready to give the Cubs a wild-card playoff berth with 31 percent of precincts still to report.
If I'm wrong, hey, never mind.
That's journalism in the new millennium.
Seriously, though, in four days the Cubs just swept the Iowa caucuses and then the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada primaries.
Now it's difficult to imagine the Cubs blowing this thing even if to do so is in the franchise's DNA. In fact, it's easier to imagine them overtaking the Pirates for the first wild card.
Arrieta said of the superior roll his pitching is on, “I'm locked in … still with the opportunity to get even better.”
The man with the 13-6 record and 2.38 earned run average could have been talking about the Cubs as a whole.
With 10 victories in their last 11 games to go 14 games over .500, the Cubs are “locked in … still with the opportunity to get even better.”
This is baseball and everything could turn, like an ankle or two, faster than you can say “Hey-hey, holy mackerel, no doubt about it.”
The bloops certainly are falling the Cubs' way. They played the Pirates and Giants back to back, and the opposing teams' pitching aces never took the mound.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon prefers to speak in “one game at a time” clichés even if he doesn't mean them.
The truth is that nobody on the wild-card horizon looks capable of beating out the Cubs. The Giants are going to have to play a lot better and so are the Nationals.
I know, I know: Just when you say nobody else is good enough to beat you, another team jumps up to beat you.
The Cubs travel to play the Giants and Dodgers later this month, a potentially tough week for a team trying to qualify for the postseason.
On the whiteboard in the Cubs' clubhouse was written, “Theme trip: Onesies/P.J.s,” presumably as traveling attire.
This a lot like kids' play for the Cubs. Baseball players are like big kids playing a little kids' game, aren't they?
They wear T-shirts like “You can't play this game on milk and cookies” and “Let's play two.”
Then, of course, there's Maddon's ubiquitous, “Do simple better.”
As the Cubs' manager said after pulling 3½ games ahead of the Giants in the race for that last playoff spot, “Let's just keep it rolling.”
Why not, indeed, right through the remaining primaries in big states like California, Pennsylvania and Ohio?
Remember, you heard it here first.
mimrem@dailyherald.com