Cubs only hope? It's in the Stone age
Monday, May 15, 2006 at 08:39AM Back in October, after the Chicago White Sox swept aside 88 years of futility to win the World Series, I wrote of how I found hope for my team, the Chicago Cubs, in the Sox's success. My how foolish I was.
Hope, it turns out, was nothing more than wishful thinking.
After the 9-0 drubbing the Cubbies got at the hands of the San Diego Padres on Sunday, their 12th loss in 13 games, it is clear now that there is no hope for this team. It turns out that this blogger had it right after all. The Cubs season was over before it even began.
Now the same Cubs fans who just three years ago revered Dusty Baker, the Cubs manager, can't wait to see him shipped out of town. The Fabulous Baker Boys came within five outs of the World Series in 2003 but have been flops in 2004, 2005 and now 2006. Turns out that they were a one-act show.
The Cubs faithful is right: Baker needs to go. As Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti writes, that's "the biggest duhhh in baseball."
Mariotti is absolutely right that the problem lies with the Cubs' owners, the Tribune Co., who have always put the bottom line over winning, which explains why the team looks more like it belongs in a hospital ward than on a baseball field. And why more time, money and energy has gone into rehabbing the baseball field instead of the baseball team.
Let's face it, the only reason to go to a Cubs game is Wrigley Field, the historic and majestic ballpark at the corner of Clark and Addison streets. It's a cash cow for the Tribsters, who have milked it for all it's worth, including renaming (desecrating) the fabled bleachers the Bud Light Bleachers.
The Tribune Co. bought the Cubs from William Wrigley in 1981 for $20.5 million. I'm guessing that they've more than recouped their investment. They've now had 25 years to turn things around. Their record in that stretch is 0-25. The Cubs haven't won a World Series or even been in a World Series. The closest they came was five outs away, in 2003. That's just not close enough.
The Cubs' futility has gone on long enough. There is no losing record anywhere in professional sports that I can think of that can match the lowly Cubs. Only the Washington Generals, the helpless opposition of the Harlem Globetrotters, comes to mind and they were playing fixed exhibition games.
The Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908. The century doomsday mark is fast approaching. If they are to reverse the course, they need to turn back the clocks and go back to the turn of the century, and not the 21st but the 20th, a time when they were known for winning. (Between 1906-1908, the Cubs played in three World Series. They lost in '06 to the South Side White Sox but then won the Series in both '07 and '08 and have not returned since.)
It's time that the Tribsters do the right thing and let go. They've had a quarter century now. It's time to give someone else a chance.
The Tribsters bank on Wrigley Field and hope. Wrigley Field obviously doesn't win games. And it seems now that hope is gone.
For hope to return, the Cubs must start over. They need to go back to the Stone age. By that I mean Steve Stone, the ex-big league pitcher and ex-Cubs broadcaster now working for ESPN and WSCR-AM.
The Tribsters gave him the heave-ho from the broadcast booth and would never admit they were wrong. They were. Stoney called it like it was and his reward was a swift kick out the door.
Here's the deal: No one else out there knows the Cubs inside and out like the Cubs. No one else understands Cubdom better than Stoney. He is the man for the job. There have been rumors before that he has had interest in buying a big-league ballclub. Why not sell the Cubs to him? It would be the perfect fit. Let him do whatever he wants with them. He just may be the Cubs only hope.
Either that, or we keep listening to the Cleaning Lady's singing this song?
Reader Comments (2)
Oh, I'm just teasing, you know. Let's face it, the Cubs just bite the big one. The Cubs collapsed when Lee went down because they're a house of glass. When the season started there was all this talk about if this fell into place and that fell into place, well, then the Cubs might actually be good. The problem is that the architects (and I use that term in its loosest construction) that designed this team (another term used in its loosest construction) was banking on hope rather than building a competitive team. When Lee went down, there was nobody to pick up the pieces. The glass had broken because the foundation was too fragile.