September Song

As the Cubs wrapped up yet another disheartening loss to their divisional nemesis Cincy last nite, the stands at Wrigley Field had emptied to about 10 percent of capacity. The Cubs' efforts to squeeze in more and more night games when school resumes has boosted attendance, but why stick around when it's past 10 p.m. on a weekday, your team is going nowhere and the bullpen has blown another lead? This is called playing out the string, the Cubs' all-too-familiar September song.

Talk of the Cubs' "chances'' has become a running joke ("we're not out of it'') and while a 15-1 finish might still do it, but let's not delude ourselves. The Cardinals come to town this weekend looking to clinch another runaway divisional title, with the best record in baseball, 100 wins in range in a year marked by overall mediocrity.



The guy sitting next to me offered to bet his net worth that Dusty Baker would not be back next year, in jest. A White Sox fan was closely monitoring the Cleveland score. We all wondered what Corey Patterson was thinking riding the bench yet again. The chance to get to .500 was somewhat enticing, but was wasted in one wretched inning, like so many games and so much else this season. Is .500 an achievement worth striving for? It gets you into the playoffs in hoops, hockey and the NL West maybe. For the Cubs, it's all they have left to point toward until Mesa and a revamped North Side roster teases us with renewed hope in February.



This current group exhausted my enthusiasm weeks ago (around the time they got swept in New York) and now I want it to be over as quickly and painlessly as possible. I'm looking to dump tickets for the remaining home games, and judging by the empty seats so are other disgruntled fans. (A scalper told me two weeks ago it's been a lean season after the gold rush of 2004.) The cheers seem a little more muted these days, even for home runs, maybe because there's so many no-shows. The deserved boos are there at times but they too seem a little hollow, almost knee-jerk to the bullpen implosions and other failures. There's very little excitement left, aside from individual heroics; Jimmy Buffet's "Wasting Away in Wrigleyville'' concerts over Labor Day weekend seemed to stir more activity around the old ballpark.



Redbird colors might outnumber true blue at Wrigley this weekend. I hope the White Sox meet them and beat them in the World Series, to give Cub management the ultimate kick in the pants.