Imrem: It might be time to think this is possible for Chicago Cubs

Oh, so the Cubs went into St. Louis and whipped the Cardinals on Monday afternoon.

The Cubs did it with No. 5 starter Dan Haren. They did it against a Cards pitcher who came in with a 2.80 earned run average. They did it 9-0.

The Cubs did it from the very start, with Dexter Fowler leading off the top of the first inning with a home run.

The game essentially was over right then, and the Cardinals looked the next three hours like they were waiting for the slaughter rule to be invoked.

As Harry Caray sang in the direction of St. Louis back in the 1980s, "The Cubbies are coming tra-la tra-la."

Quality pitching pretty much has had its way with the Cubs, but maybe beating up Lance Lynn signals a leap into the last frontier and onto the great beyond.

The Cards have more where Lynn came from, and their starting rotation might cuff the Cubs on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Still, at this very point in time, if the Cubs were any other team, it would be easy to start believing that they can win the World Series.

Yes, this season.

However, as you know, my perpetual belief is that the Cubs will never win a World Series in my lifetime.

And, as you also know, I expect to live forever.

But if this were, say, even a smaller-market team like the Padres or Marlins, a championship would be at least imaginable.

Why not?

The operable perception is that in this era of baseball - all sports actually - anything can happen if a team qualifies for the postseason.

The Cubs are headed for the playoffs. Not even I can doubt that. They are too far ahead to be caught with a mere 26 games to play.

Not only that, the Cubs are closing in on overtaking the Pirates for the National League's first wild-card spot, which would place the winner-move-on play-in game in Chicago instead of Pittsburgh.

The Cubs would throw virtually unhittable Jake Arrieta on that night. The Pirates would counter with ace Gerrit Cole. When these two outstanding pitchers collide, homefield advantage just might make the difference.

Hey, it's a plan, and from there, who knows? Is any team in baseball really, really scary? The Cardinals own the game's best record, but is their batting order really, really scary?

No, it isn't, which means the Cubs would win a five-game NLDS against the Cards and move into the NLCS against … the Mets!

What a clash of polar-opposite drafting and developing philosophies that would be: the Mets' young pitching supplemented by veteran hitting against the Cubs' young hitting supplemented by veteran pitching.

So now we have the Cubs against the Mets and it says here that for a change good hitting beats good pitching.

That puts the Cubs in the World Series against Toronto, which went all-in with major additions at the July 31 trading deadline.

Whoa! Slow down! I move too fast! I gotta make the season last!

Lyrical warnings notwithstanding, other aspirants like the Pirates and Cardinals appeared to be laboring on Labor Day while the Cubs are hopping merrily along as if this were a beer league instead of the major leagues.

Seriously, if this were anybody but the Cubs it would be conceivable that they would have a chance to beat the Blue Jays for the championship.

But they are still the Cubs, so winning a World Series in my lifetime remains difficult to imagine.

But I do have to keep telling myself that.

mimrem@dailyherald.com