Now that the foul ball is toast and another sad chapter in Cubs history officially has been put to rest, only one big question remains: Can the Cubs handle success?
“I just think everybody saw what our potential was last year,” closer Joe Borowski said, “especially after no one knew what to expect coming into the year. [Now] everybody has the doubts out of their minds.
“That’s the big difference–we’re not wondering, ‘Are we going to be competitive?’ “
The changes are already on display at the Cubs’ camp. The crowds coming to watch practice are almost double from a year ago, and the national media has been focusing more on the Cubs than it has since the Sammy Sosa-Mark McGwire home-run race in 1998.
“When I first got here, I was like, ‘Eeew, we’re not looking too good,’ ” manager Dusty Baker said. “I remember my wife telling me one day when we threw the ball from third base into right field, back to left field over the catcher’s head and back somewhere else, ‘Man, you guys are like the ‘Bad News Bears.’ I said, ‘We’ll tighten it up.’
“The biggest difference was we tightened up our defense … and we could still play better. You take away a lot of those errors from our pitchers early in the season, and we’d rank among the top in [NL] defense.
“The Cubs always were known, as far as I was concerned, for not being a fundamentally sound team, where if you stayed close to them, they’ll do something to help you beat ’em.”
Taking into account all the statistical categories, it’s hard to imagine the 2003 Cubs came within five outs of the World Series. Outside of starting pitchers Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs were average–at best–in almost every other phase of the game.
And if Milwaukee hadn’t handled Houston on the final weekend of the season, they wouldn’t even have made the playoffs. But the off-season additions of Greg Maddux, Derrek Lee and LaTroy Hawkins have helped offset the team’s close call in October.
“Everybody believes it can happen. But how many really believed last year it was going to happen? You have to look at the positive side–it was a great season, and look at the fact the starting pitchers got to experience playoff baseball,” Clement said. “Wood had one [playoff] start, in ’98, and that was it. We held our own pretty good as starters in the playoffs. That experience will be pretty valuable to us later on this season.”
