The Cubs find themselves in a barely tenable position with their National League Division Series moving to Wrigley Field for the weekend, down 0-2 to the Arizona Diamondbacks. It’s best-of-five, so the Cubs left themselves no margin for error by dropping the first two games in the Arizona desert.
No animals — billy goats, black cats, etc. — were harmed or even involved in the creation of this deficit, no ham-handed first baseman booted a grounder with a game on the line. And no headphones-wearing, unfortunate Cubs fan can be charged with altering the course of history by being in the wrong place at a terribly wrong time.
No, all the oddball incidents that give the Cubs their own quirky place in sports history have been missing from this postseason. This series is being settled on the field.
The Cubs are where they are because the young Diamondbacks have outplayed them, and that’s the way it should be. Brandon Webb’s deft pitching, Chris Young’s majestic power and Stephen Drew’s two-way excellence are doing in the Cubs, not some goofy 4-year-old debate over whether Luis Castillo’s foul pop was catchable.
And if they’re able to turn the series around and just maybe win it, that will mean Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez came to life at the plate and Rich Hill pitched lights-out in the game they had to have and Carlos Zambrano came back on short rest and was The Man he so desperately yearns to be.
The ’07 Cubs will be remembered as a baseball team, not a basket case. A far better story.
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dmcgrath@tribune.com
