A Nightmare on Clark Street

Really? The best Cubs team in 63 years and this is how the playoffs go? The spirited, care free team of the past six months has completely disappeared. In its place is the team all Cubs fans, even the most loyal of ones, deep down were scared to death might appear. The weight of pressure can crack even the greatest of human beings, and right now it looks like the guys we love might not have what it takes. 4 errors, all four infielders, making one. 7-2 and 10-3 to the Dodgers, a team that finished 6 games over .500? As a fan I feel sick, but I feel even worse for the players. You watch a team for enough games and they become people more than players. Those guys bleed blue and want so fricking badly to win this together for each other and everyone else. I can't help and think of them slumped at their lockers, mumbling responses to interview questions, trying to wake up from a dream but their eyes won't open. And that makes me sadder than anything.

When Russell Martin's double cleared the bases in that impossibly bad 2nd inning, I just flat out left the bar I was at without saying a word to anyone. Just walked out, passed my car and kept on going. It was really the only thing I knew how to do. I ended up walking to Allianz, cleaned my fish bowl and watered my plant. Thought how good a cigarette might taste. If this team that is this talented from top to bottom can't win in the playoffs, what hope do we ever have? This wasn't wistful optimism headed into the season, then the summer, and finally the playoffs. This wasn't about the team getting hot and catching some breaks to win a championship. This was a team that everyone was behind, they had proven themselves in every possible way during the season. They swept the Brewers, Mets and Diamondbacks, when each team at the time was arguably the second best team in the league. They won NINE straight series during the middle of the season, the first time it's happened in decades. They had a mercurial pitcher throw the first no-hitter in our lifetime. They outscored their opponents by almost 200 runs, far more than any team in baseball.

So what does it all mean? Is the journey really better than the destination? It's impossible to measure a team's true worth without taking into account what they do when it really matters. For so many years the Cubs never even sniffed the playoffs, we watched the playoffs because we loved the game but secretly wished for our guys to have a chance one day. Some people remember the loss in 1945, more still the collapse of 1969, and even more the debacle of 1984. That was my first sports memory, and it will never leave me. I was 5 and didn't really know the pain of a giant loss...until 2003 that is. 5 outs from the World Series, leading 3-0 in the clinching game with your best pitcher on the mound. It was FINALLY happening. And of course it didn't happen. As soon as we were about to feel an unprecedented kind of good, the storm of bad swept onto the scene and overtook it. Some said it was just the start, that they would be back the next year. But I knew better. Nothing is promised. A small part of me left that October, and I'm not sure it will come back until the night when at long last we drink from the Cup. 30 hours ago, that feeling was close as it's ever been. Now it seems like it's never been farther away.

This series feels over. I hope more than anything that I'm wrong. Very few things make me feel pain. Cubs playoff losses do. Maybe that's stupid because it's only a game. Or maybe it makes sense because it stands for something bigger. All I know is I've had a vision this year more than ever of singing deliriously in the streets around Wrigley for hours into the endless night after a World Series victory. Driving in the car, sitting at work, playing softball, the vision followed me everywhere. It made my smile get big and my eyes go soft.

And now it's gone.