Here comes the pity party. The talk of Bartman and black cats and billy goats. The wailing that the Cubs will never win the World Series, not after 100 years, not after 1,000.
It's so much bunk.
The Cubs are exactly where the Red Sox were in 2003, after Grady stuck too long with Pedro, after Aaron Boone went deep, after the Yankees stuck in yet another dagger.
Of course, you could have said the same thing about the Cubs after their own collapse in '03, but the Red Sox weren't cursed and neither are the Cubs.
At some point, good teams eventually win championships, just as good hitters eventually produce in the clutch.
For the past century â and certainly in their most recent flop, an embarrassing first-round knockout by the Dodgers â the Cubs just haven't been good enough.
Such a statement might sound odd, considering that the Cubs won 97 games in the regular season, the most in the National League. But the postseason is a crapshoot, the best-of-five Division Series in particular. The Cubs are a good team that had a bad series. Nothing more, nothing less.
What do they do now? Very simple â try again.
Oh, the Cubs made six errors against the Dodgers, went 5-for-26 with runners in scoring position, played like chokers rather than champions. But they aren't the Mets, who gagged in the 2006 NLCS, gagged in '07, gagged in '08.
A year ago, the Cubs were an 85-win team that got beat by the 90-win Diamondbacks in the Division Series. This time, they got caught in a baseball never-land after clinching the division title early, then had to face a badly underrated Dodgers team.
Manager Lou Piniella will be second-guessed for not playing the final week differently. Baseball will be second-guessed for not making the Division Series a best-of-seven. Sorry, the Cubs understood the stakes, played by the same rules as every other club. They just got beat.
Left fielder Alfonso Soriano is 3-for-28 the past two postseasons, third baseman Aramis Ramirez 2-for-23. Right fielder Kosuke Fukudome turned out to be a disappointment. Right-handers Ryan Dempster and Rich Harden faltered at the worst possible times. Still, this group does not suffer from some deep character flaw. As the rest of the NL can attest, it's a reasonably tough-minded bunch.
The Cubs need to re-sign Dempster, a potential free agent. They need to obtain a left-handed slugger for their outfield, with Fukudome remaining in right or moving to center. They perhaps could use one more starting pitcher and one more spirited gamer â a Nate McLouth, perhaps, or an Orlando Hudson. But let's not forget what this team accomplished. And let's not turn this defeat into anything more than it is.
For the Red Sox to win the 2004 World Series, they needed to change their culture by trading Nomar Garciapparra at midseason, then rally from a three-games-to-none deficit against the Yankees in the ALCS.
Maybe the Cubs will need to undergo the same kind of catharsis to end their championship drought. Or maybe they just need to keep creating opportunities.
Cubs fans carry around signs saying, "It's Gonna Happen," as if the team is engaged in some type of mystical quest. Better the Cubs' motto should be "Make it Happen" or at least some other updated version of "Cowboy Up."
Ask the Red Sox, who after enduring the Bill Buckner miscue in 1986, suffered additional playoff defeats in '88, '90, '95, '98, '99 and, finally, '03.
It's always the darkest before the dawn.
