With pitchers and catchers reporting this week, now is the perfect time to remind everyone in Chicago that the Cubs won the 2016 World Series.
It’s not that I fear people there have forgotten this fact. It’s just that I’m worried some Chicagoans are still too hung over to be thinking clearly.
That is, at least the ones who’ve stopped drinking.
As you might recall, quite a party was ignited when the Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians in an epic 10-inning Game 7 that took enough time and turns to require a bus transfer.
When we last checked in on Chicago, it was laughing, weeping, toasting, bawling, whooping and crying itself into the most delirious state of sports fandom: exhaustion by exultation.
We used to have those moments around here, remember, but then Jim Buss started running the Lakers.
The reaction to the Cubs’ triumph was historic because the Cubs’ triumph was historic, the franchise having gone 108 years without a World Series championship.
Now, however, both the past and the present suggest this team could be on the verge of turning its once-mockable fanbase into the short-suffering kind, something formerly never-in-a-lifetime possibly happening twice in a span of barely 12 months.
The Cubs’ previous title, in 1908, was the second of back-to-back championships and came during a stretch in which they made four World Series appearances in five years.
So, as mythical as all that felt last fall, there was a time when the Chicago Cubs were more like today’s New England Patriots, winning at a pace that approached – or surpassed, depending on your perspective – annoying.
Given that, perhaps these Cubs are about to continue the team’s rich tradition of winning in bunches.
Hey, why not? There are few franchises in sports as attached to the past as the Cubs, who more than once over the years imported a goat in a very logical attempt to exorcise yesterday’s demons.
“I think we’re hungrier than ever,” third baseman Kris Bryant recently told reporters in Chicago. “We would love to be that team that goes back to back. I think we all have the right mindset.”
Even more significant for the Cubs in 2017 is the reality that everyone projects them to be among the best teams in baseball, the biggest question being whether or not they can again win 100 games.
That’s one hamstring-endangering leap in expectation, the Cubs going from a century of losing to the century mark of winning. And doing so maybe two years in a row.
One sportsbook in Nevada just forecast Chicago’s win total at 95.5, the highest in baseball.
I don’t know about your experience. But I’ve always found sportsbooks to be ridiculously adept at seeing into the future and making me pay for their brilliance.
Based on the PECOTA projections by Baseball Prospectus, the Cubs will win just 91 games, a 12-victory drop that one ESPN writer spent nearly an entire column questioning.
That’s also eight fewer wins than the same formula spit out for the 2017 Dodgers, which could be encouraging for local fans.
Then again, it should be added that another projection, this one from FanGraphs, somehow has the Angels winning 84 games.
So, any forecast that lacks the input of Doppler radar needs to be treated as such, like all other guessing games in which seeing into the future can be done just as effectively with the eyes closed.
“I think you gain sort of an inner confidence,” Cubs president Theo Epstein said of defending a crown. “(There’s) a default belief that you and your teammates know how to win and, through hard times, you just have a faith in getting back to what got you there.”
The Dodgers are among the teams still trying to capture that belief, baseball’s schedule makers presenting them with the opportunity to witness its fruits firsthand.
They’ll be at Wrigley Field on April 10 when the Cubs open their home schedule with a celebration of the ’16 championship the Dodgers were pursuing until they encountered Kyle Hendricks.
They were eliminated from the National League Championship Series in Chicago, 5-0, on a chilly October night during which they produced two hits – both singles – and never had an at-bat with a runner in scoring position.
Three months later, the Cubs were at the White House being recognized by our outgoing President.
“It took you long enough,” Barack Obama told them. “I’ve only got four days left.”
And now the whole sport is about to get cranked up again in Arizona and Florida, spring training representing the greatest annual rebirth in sports.
That’s true every year even in the one place where the previous season never died, particularly in Chicago, where, when it comes to the Cubs, they’re always eager to order another round.
Contact the writer: jmiller@scng.com
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