To be a Cubs fan is to wait on a miracle that never comes
The Phillies and the Rockies have become the sentimental favorites in the National League playoffs because of the dramatic finishes that gained them entry into the October games. The Phils won on the final game of the season, as the New York Mets, who had led the Eastern Division almost from the start of the year, completed their collapse. The Colorado Rockies, who looked anything but formidable when they visited Washington early in the season, finished with a flurry, winning 14 of their final 15 games, and beat the San Diego Padres in a one-game playoff for the wild-card spot, 9-8, on a controversial play at the plate in the 13th inning.
But for some of us, the real miracle is that the Cubs are in the playoffs. Not since 1908 have the Cubs been the world champions, so any time we get into contention for the World Series, hearts beat a little faster. I saw them only once this year -- on a glorious Independence Day at old Robert F. Kennedy Stadium here in Washington, when our local team of upstarts, the Nationals, managed to win. But Washingtonians have a rooting interest in the Cubs because Alfonso Soriano, who had played spectacularly for the Nationals last year, was lured to Chicago by a huge contract. He is a joy to watch and many of us are proud to see him in the leadoff spot for the Cubs.
The one cloud on the horizon is that they are playing the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first round of the playoffs. The short-term problem is that the first games began at 10 p.m. Eastern time, when drowsiness afflicts many of us of my vintage.
The bigger problem lies in the Cubs history with those new teams from out West. I have terrible memories of the 1984 playoff series against the Padres. Having grown up as a Cubs fan in Chicago Heights, and waited almost 40 years to see them in the post season, I was at Wrigley Field for the start of that series, and the story I wrote for The Washington Post about that game began, "Don't wake me up. I'm dreaming."
On a perfect October day, I was one of 36,282 watching as the Cubs tried to get to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Amazingly, they won 13-0, with Rick Sutcliffe dominating the Padres, yielding only two hits and even hitting a home run himself.
The next day, I watched as the Cubs won again, 4-2, and Thomas Boswell, the Post's magesterial sports writer, wrote that "baseball's equivalent of divinity -- the sacred breaks -- are now running Cubward like a flood tide." Boswell pointed out that no National League team had ever come back after losing the first two games of the five-game championship series. The Cubs flew off to San Diego needing just one win to be in the World Series.
They never got it. They lost the first game on the West Coast 7-1; the second, 7-5. Come Sunday afternoon for the final game, and Sutcliffe was on the mound again. The Cubs led 3-0 going into the sixth inning, 3-2 at the start of the seventh. But a routine grounder slid past Leon Durham at first base, and the rout was on. By the time the inning was over, the Padres led 6-3. That was the final score.
I watched that game, in shock, in Louisville, Ky., where Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were going to hold their first debate of the 1984 election that night. I don't know if Reagan -- who had re-created Cubs games for a Des Moines radio station as a young man -- was watching too, and if he was as dismayed as I was. But his performance that night was awful, so bad that it produced stories asking if his age was catching up with him.
Reagan came back and demolished Mondale in the second debate -- and swept to a landslide victory. The Cubs are still struggling to recover. It's a miracle they're in the playoffs. I do not expect another miracle to follow.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group