Rozner: Chicago Cubs won't allow narrative to engulf them
Very early Friday, while flipping through the channels and searching for highlights from a particularly bad NFL game, the remote found its way to ESPN2.
The focus on that channel at that moment was baseball, and the conversation was about the Cubs and Dodgers.
But not about a great series. Not about the brilliance of players on both sides. Not about the managing decisions. Not about Jon Lester, Addison Russell, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo, Clayton Kershaw or Kenley Jansen.
Not about the Cubs' season-long domination of the National League, or the incredible perseverance of the Dodgers, who long ago should have succumbed to pitching injuries.
No, it was about a foul ball that occurred 13 years ago.
Yup, the clowns are in town and it's going to get a lot worse over the next 10 days if the Cubs can win a game this weekend.
Let's face it, there is an everlasting need to make this story bigger than it is. It's unrelenting, truly, a massive attack of hyperbole on the part of those charged with recording history, but insist on altering it.
The desire to widen the lens and broaden the optics, to see a global picture, is baffling to those participating in the event.
To maintain this approach is to deny the very existence of what Cubs players say about where they are and what they're doing. No, they're not fools. They know there's a lot at stake for the fan base.
But they don't feel it during a game, during an at-bat. They don't throw pitches carrying the weight of 108 years.
They are athletes playing a game, and during a game there are no thoughts of history or witchcraft. They have a job to do and a responsibility to their teammates, to execute and perform for them.
They are, in that moment, simply competing. That's what athletes do. They compete. It's the best part of the job, to see if they can win that moment. That's what they live for. It's what they play for.
But, apparently, this is a complicated concept.
"Yeah, it's part of this job, hearing that stuff. You kind of get used to that," said Cubs starter Jon Lester. "People kind of project what they think, but they might not really understand what it feels like.
"We don't think about a lot of those things that people say we're thinking about."
Lester laughed recently about that idea, that the Cubs are affected by these decades-old narratives.
"It's kind of boring, really," Lester said. "We like playing baseball and we like being together and we want to win a title. But the focus has to be on one day. That day is today. Then, you move on to tomorrow.
"That's how you play sports. You don't play with all that other stuff in your head."
The search for a storyline that explains something larger - that gives meaning to life, splits the atom or proves relativity - is understandable. It's necessary, almost certainly, for most humans trying to get through a day.
But in the case of a baseball team it's laughable, the attempt to make it more significant.
For a fan waiting a lifetime, it's reasonable, but for breathless observers it's inexplicable when the very players in question have gone out of their way to politely explain that in the moment they have no concept or care for all of what's occurred in the last 108 years.
When the Cubs went through a hitting slump at the worst possible time a few days ago, it was suddenly attributable to events that occurred in postseasons past.
Little consideration was given to the fact that postseason pitchers are generally very good and that opposing teams have reached this point in October because of their pitching and defense.
It's shameful and annoying and insulting - and it's not going away any time soon.
Just one more reason to hope that sometime in the next two weeks, this narrative finds the bottom of a very deep grave.
brozner@dailyherald.com
• Hear Barry Rozner on WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.