Earning A Tiny Bit Of Optimism

How many different Wild Card scenarios have you run through in your mind? I’m well into the dozens, and nearly all of them involve the Cubs sweeping Houston this week. That’s where it has to start, the cautious optimists think, because even winning the series only subtracts 1 from the gap in the loss column. Subtract 3 and Cub Nation's optimism will reemerge in full bloom.

We hear that Roger Clemens is having back problems, after all, and that Pittsburgh knocked them around, and we think that maybe Houston isn’t so intimidating. Maybe the Cubs are catching them when they’re winded, so to speak. If the Cubs are getting hot -- and they seem to be -- then Houston shouldn’t out slug them.

The AL East? Who knows any more? One day it’s Washington, the next it’s Philadelphia, and then today I listen to the chatter and hear that the Marlins are the public’s new favorite to emerge out there for the Wild Card. If Houston slips, the Marlins do have the best pitching and plenty of firepower. Yet, why haven’t they jumped up sooner?

With the Wild Card, it’s just another case where no one knows, as usual and as always.

Here’s what we can say after last night: it’s a darn shame that the Cubs couldn’t have sent out a lineup like this one a few weeks earlier. Patterson and Garciaparra are producing the extra RBIs that the Cubs needed all season. Some people still doubt whether Patterson especially will produce for seven more weeks, but as I watched his at-bats last night, I didn’t see any of the holes. Even as Burnitz has gone absentee, when he bounces back this lineup can go 8 solid (with good-hitting pitchers on top of that). And while I was the last person to expect Macias to come through last night -- screaming in error, “Why use Macias right here?!?” as he proceeds to rip in a pair of RBIs -- the bench is deeper with people who can produce in a few of those spots.

What it comes down to is that this lineup is stacked in a way to produce the extra runs here and there. This is a lineup that can win close ballgames. This is a lineup that should threaten to score every other inning. Finally.

Same for the bullpen: if only this bullpen were around a few weeks earlier. Relief pitcher Kerry Wood all of a sudden seems downright intimidating. Weeks ago I would have been expecting a St. Louis comeback last night. With Wood clipping 98mph (and 100mph last week against Jason LaRue) the Cardinals seemed overpowered. Add in that kind of a pitcher, and everyone else falls into line behind the shift in attitude.

We start to anticipate our “what-ifs” because if only the Cubs could make the playoffs, we would actually like their chances. The NL West will be a .500 team, St. Louis is missing half their middle lineup firepower, and Atlanta is counting on rookies. With solid starting pitching across the board, any one of the Wild Card contenders could win two series and head to the big one.

So, is this the start of the Cubs grand rally, or was this just one last tease showing how good they can be in any given series, which is to say how good they might have been? Who knows anymore? Who ever did? If the Cubs stay in the race until the end -- win or lose -- the word for the 2005 season will have been “dizzying.” If they prove to have dug too deep a hole, then we might regret having even seen a glimpse of what they might have looked like.

To be honest, I didn’t watch most of the series. I caught Derrek Lee’s first homerun on Thursday with Pat & Ron as I rode the El into Chicago. Friday and Saturday were a blur for my sister’s wedding. As a result, I wasn’t sure what to expect on Sunday. What I saw was confidence, and it didn’t feel like a hot streak so much as it felt like the team might recognize how good it was in alternate possible worlds.

So now what’s our tone? Blatant distrust? Skeptic optimism? Guarded optimism? Maybe it’s even better than that. (Maybe.) No one is saying it’s likely to happen, but a part of me thinks that it would be fitting for this team to find redemption after sinking so low, so late. That would be a story worth following. That would be a Cubs story.

Let’s try it on for size, then, just to see how it fits: This will be a story worth following.