Hollywood or bust? It's up to Cubs
The champagne dried in Cincinnati, Wrigleyville revelers are back on their barstools, and just one question remains.
Is this 2007 Cubs team Hollywood or Follywood?
When a feature film is made about these guys, will it be a sports classic, or just another Cubs tragicomedy in a century haunted by them?
Will the plot portray a baseball team that took awhile to reach a championship level, or one that's simply a product of a weak division?
Despite all the celebrating from here to Ohio the other night, the Cubs have a lot left to prove. Actually, they still have everything to prove.
On Side 1 of the discussion, the Cubs will enter the National League playoffs with the worst record among the qualifiers.
On Side 2, the Central Division produced the National League's last two World Series representatives.
On Side 1, it could be that two teams with better records than the Cubs will be shut out of the NL's postseason field.
On Side 2, the Cardinals won a world championship last year with fewer regular-season victories than the Cubs will have.
Yes, folks, there are two sides to every argument and it's left to these Cubs to determine in October which is more valid.
Meanwhile, they'll also either validate themselves as a good team or prove to be just another tease in their long history of them.
Hollywood or Follywood, indeed?
Beating out the Brewers -- the Brewers, of all people -- in the NL Central crawl to fall was pure folly if that's all there is.
The 2007 Cubs season will be legitimate only if followed up by a postseason dominated by Cubs Blue rather than blue Cubs.
Right now the Cubs' title has to be considered a function of the company they kept in a division that played something like a million games under .500 against the rest of baseball.
The Cubs in the NL Central are little more, or maybe even a little less, than the Bears were in the weak NFC North and the Bulls were in a weaker NBA East.
A case could be made that the worst team in the American League playoffs is better than the best team in the National League.
Doesn't matter. Thanks to a fortuitous series of events -- I think during the Lincoln Administration -- the Cubs reside in the NL.
As is said, and as the Bears proved last season, get into the playoffs and anything can happen.
What's important is that not a single one of the other National League contenders has been worth diddly-squat either.
The Diamondbacks are about 20-games over .500 despite yielding more runs than they scored. One of the Padres' best hitters injured his knee when his manager tackled him in some intramural exercise. Neither the Phillies nor the Mets can get anyone out. The Rockies are still the Rockies, which essentially means they're the Brewers.
Aren't those things normally said about the Cubs?
Anyway, the Cubs shouldn't be afraid of anybody in the National League. Ah, but then there's that Side 2 again: Nobody has much reason to be afraid of the Cubs.
The next couple of weeks could change that. Two weeks of solid baseball would validate the Cubs and make the world forget how flawed they and their division are.
It's up to them: Hollywood or Follywood?
mimrem@dailyherald.com