Has it really come to this point of desperate indignity for Cubs fans?
Rooting for the hated St. Louis Cardinals, even if it is just for three games against the Brewers?
“Funny you mention that,” Cardinals catcher Gary Bennett was saying Monday. “I live in Libertyville, so I stay at home when we play the Brewers. I was driving up today and talking to my dad at work.
“He goes, ‘All those Cub fans I’ve been fighting with all year are my best friends now.'”
Or, as Morris native and Cardinals infielder Scott Spiezio puts it: “Funny when the need comes, you tend to like someone a little more.”
Yes, war can create strange friendships.
“I guess in layman’s terms, that’s the way you put it,” Brewers relief pitcher Ray King said. “I’ve been on both sides, the Cubs and the Cardinals, and it’s crazy, but in this situation I think there’s more Cub fans pulling for the Cardinals today than there will be wherever they are tomorrow.”
But millions of extra fans — and even a rare Bennett home run — couldn’t help the ragtag Cardinals lower the Cubs’ magic number below 4 Monday night.
Heck, the way ace Adam Wainwright was knocked around in the Brewers’ 13-5 victory, Cubs fans might as well just go back to rooting for their own team to take care of things.
But Cubs fans can still take comfort in this statistic, courtesy of the Brewers’ public relations department: Only two teams in history have come from 3 1/2 games behind with seven games left to make the playoffs, and the last one to do it was the 1962 San Francisco Giants.
After Monday’s victory, the Brewers cut their deficit in the NL Central to three games. And that comes as no surprise to manager Ned Yost, who chastised the media before Monday’s game for asking if there was any hope.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Yost asked in an incredulous voice. “Come on. We’ve got seven days left. There’s not one player in our locker room that thinks we’re out of this yet.”
So what could Yost possibly tell his team, which had just lost three of four in Atlanta, including Sunday’s game when they blamed the umpires?
“Well, I tell them that we’re four days out of first place and we focus hard on what we’re trying to accomplish today,” he said.
For those who still believe — and there were 40,908 of them at Miller Park on Monday — that number of days away from first place is now three. But even that is an almost impossible chore.
“We’re up against it and we feel like we have to win every game really,” said infielder Craig Counsell, who has played on two World Series champions. “That’s the way it is right now.
“You get down to where you get close at the end and you like to say it doesn’t matter what the other team does, but in the last week it does matter what the other team does.”
And so the red-hot Cubs, who have won eight of their last 10 games as they begin a three-game series Tuesday in Miami, will have something to say about this race, of course. Four Cubs victories count as much as four Brewers losses.
This being Milwaukee, the Brewers still feel they have a chance. They do have the best home record in the National League, as well as the most home runs, now up to 221 after Prince Fielder put them ahead 4-0 with a three-run missile in the first inning, his 48th homer, and Ryan Braun added a two-run shot.
They also are not going down without a fight, given three more ejections Monday, including the second in two days for Yost.
So the Brewers are back “up” after two straight late downer defeats in Atlanta.
“One thing about the pennant race is the agony of it,” Yost said, “the highs when it’s good and the lows when it’s [bad]. Nobody cares when you’re 15 games out. There’s no fun in that.”
Of course, Cubs fans know all about that.
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dvandyck@tribune.com
