Beating Mets would help Cubs exorcise demons of 1969
Bring on the next dragon for the Cubs to slay and the next demon for them to exorcise.
Gone are the rival Cardinals, whom the Cubs disposed of in the National League division series.
Tonight in New York begins the National League championship series against the Mets, not as traditional, natural or geographic a rival as St. Louis but perhaps more annoying for longtime Cubs fans.
Frightening does strike twice and Cubs fans might fear that lightning will, too.
Playing the Mets in such a meaningful series reopens an old wound that will close only if the Cubs prevail.
It has been 46 years since the Mets overtook the Cubs to win the NL pennant, making 1969 hysterically historic in North Side baseball lore.
That's hysterically not as in amusing but as in running around screaming how unfair the baseball gods can be.
The '69 pennant race and World Series were the inspiration for the “Amazin' Mets” characterization and an exclamation of the Cubs' “lovable losers” characterization.
The billy goat curse of 1945 sort of gave birth to the black cat hex of 1969.
“It was quite a time the way (the Mets) came back,” current Cubs' manager Joe Maddon recalled Friday, “and a special moment for the Mets.”
Also so haunting to this day for Cubs fans old enough to have witnessed it.
Now the Cubs' pennant drought has stretched 70 years, long enough for a grudge to fester.
Cubs stars from the summer of '69 — Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ferguson Jenkins — became sympathetic figures because they wound up never playing in a World Series during their illustrious careers.
Each is in the Hall of Fame yet known as much for falling short in '69.
Yet that Cubs team remains as beloved despite not winning a World Series as the 1985 Bears team is for winning the Super Bowl.
What a fun season '69 was: The Bleacher Bums wearing construction helmets above the left-field wall; Santo kicking up his heels after a victory; pitcher Dick Selma waving a white towel to lead cheers from the bullpen.
A few players even mingled on occasion with fans across the street in Ray's Bleachers, the saloon that became Murphy's Bleachers in 1980.
But in the end those Cubs didn't win anything.
If anything, 1969 was why fans began waiting at once for next year and for something bad to happen: like the Gatorade glove of '84 did and the Bartman ball of '03 did and any number of other Cubbie occurrences did.
Ron Santo died in 2010 at age 70. Ernie Banks died in January at 84. Billy Williams is 77 years old, Fergie Jenkins is 72 and those two still are waiting for the Cubs to achieve what eluded them.
Wait 'til 2015? This year's success is so sudden, so much a surprise, so serious.
Common refrains have been that the Cubs “are a year ahead of schedule” and “are playing with house money” and “have nothing to lose.”
Well, if that's really how the players feel, maybe it's the formula necessary to win a pennant for the first time in seven decades.
“It's gotta end sometime, right?” Cubs' pitcher Jon Lester said Friday of the wait. “It's been a long time.”
Just tear that Band-Aid off before the media bombard the young Cubs in coming years with the negative vibe that nothing good is supposed to happen to this franchise.
Leave it to former Cubs and older fans to understand what it would mean for that elusive something good to happen against the Mets.
Slaying dragons and exorcising demons, indeed.
mimrem@dailyherald.com