Rozner: Cubs a runaway train to reckon with

Scar tissue is supposed to be the bond that keeps a team together during the tough times, when teams overcome adversity and set behind them the pain of losing.

Young teams have to fail before they succeed, must grow from the agony of defeat, disappointment prevailing in perpetuity as the ultimate professor of baseball higher learning.

Yeah, um, someone forgot to tell the 2015 Cubs.

They have destroyed decades of baseball certainty and blown through the bottom rungs of the ladder, eschewing the step-by-step process and taking leaps when teams their age are merely crawling.

"A year ago at this time, Kyle Schwarber is in the Instructional League," Jason McLeod said with a laugh, followed by a long pause and a shake of his head. "Tonight he's hitting a home run into Lake Michigan against the Cardinals in the NLDS."

McLeod stopped and repeated, "The Cardinals in the NLDS."

McLeod shook his head again, guzzled some champagne and chuckled once more. He is the architect of this monstrosity that is merely in its infancy. This is only the beginning. These players are years away from reaching their potential.

And even McLeod has trouble explaining it. Sure, Theo Epstein is the CEO, the brains behind every move, every decision and every pick. But McLeod is the guy scouring the planet, finding extraordinary talent with extraordinary character.

But he can't explain this.

"You watch it and you sort of have to pinch yourself and do a reality check," Epstein said. "They are very talented players and special people, but … I don't know."

Epstein smiled and drank in the sea of players, coaches, executives and friends that had washed up over Wrigley Field.

"It's a young man's world. It's a young man's game," Epstein said. "They want it and they go get it."

Never mind second-half struggles, forget the wild-card game, don't give any thought to the NLDS.

The best team in baseball during the regular season was only so much fodder for the beast that has become the Cubs, the Cardinals succumbing to a relentless Cubs attack that seems to never understand the stakes or the desperation.

After losing Game 1, the Cubs took the next three, clinching the NLDS before 42,411 with a 6-4 victory Tuesday afternoon.

Welcome back to the National League championship series, Chicago.

For the third time in 17 days the Cubs threw a party, spraying one another with champagne and beer, and this time sharing it with the faithful who stuck around by the tens of thousands to watch the postgame victory lap.

After three years of hardly a simple regular-season victory to celebrate, the Cubs have been through three clinchings in such a short period of time that they appeared somewhat, well, subdued compared to the first two.

Maybe that's because they expected it.

"I didn't have any doubt we would win this series, and that's with total respect for St. Louis," Schwarber said. "They're the team to beat. They're the best every year. They're the standard.

"We just know what we know."

What the Cubs know is that they need 8 more victories to win the World Series, and don't doubt that they absolutely expect to win it all.

"It's something else to watch, Kris Bryant, Jorge Soler, Kyle Schwarber, Addison Russell, Javy Baez, all these kids doing what they do," said 10-year veteran Jon Lester. "I know how it was supposed to be, us veterans leading the way.

"It's not how it is. We just get on the kids' backs and they carry us."

Regardless of circumstance.

"I've never seen players, young or old, completely unaffected by a bad game or a bad at-bat," Lester said. "These guys, they have a bad at-bat and they're so competitive that they want to come back next at-bat and hit it farther than the last guy hit it.

"They compete with each other. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. This is a different group of players. They're just different, man."

Maybe it's semantics, but it seems a fundamental misunderstanding to say the Cubs never quit. It's more like they put the quit in the opposition with a relentless and exhausting approach that knows no boundaries.

They score with two outs like it's their given right. They score the next inning after giving up runs as if they're owed those runs. They turn hits into outs on defense like it's an insult the opposition would even try.

They outlast other teams until the other teams quit.

They were among the last teams expected to be here, and Tuesday they became the first team to clinch a spot in the final four.

How can this be happening? Where does it end? When does this absurd season reach a conclusion?

The Cubs are certain they know the answer and it involves 8 more victories.

What not very long ago was unreasonable and unrealistic - in the words of Epstein himself - has become an undeniable force, a runaway train that takes apart any team which dares get near the tracks.

There are miles to go and rough terrain to travel, do not doubt that, but it's not advisable stepping in front of this force.

The Cubs, at least right now, simply don't know how to lose.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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