The Cubs have been out of the race for a couple of weeks now, but the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was check the score of the Rockies game. The Cubs won 2-0 last night behind Ryan Dempster and a defense that has improved markedly since the shelving of Alfonso Soriano. A Rockies loss to the Giants, and the Cubs gnaw their way to within 6 1/2 games of a wild card berth with 19 games to play . . . A few more wins and a couple of Rockies losses, and the Cubs are right back in it. Marmol is lights out, and the starters are all throwing it great right now. The Cubs won their last 21 games to win the 1935 pennant you know. Anything can happen.
It’ll never happen, of course. The Cubs are simply not a good team this year and there are too many teams ahead of them for the Cubs to take advantage of a Rockies’ swoon.
Yet there’s hope, however delusional. And to be fair, the author -- Kent Sterling of Indianapolis’ ESPN radio affiliate -- admits that he’s crazy for even thinking it. Still, you gotta love this kind of stuff. Such optimism is truly one of the defining traits of baseball. A function of there being so many damn games. A function of there being so much damn history.
It’s impossible, sure. But the impossible has happened in baseball before, and it’s that kind of thing that keeps fans coming back even in the waning days of an otherwise lost Cubs season.