Wait till.... (you know the rest)

Baseball season is over. At least for us loyalist Cubs fans that could care less who wins the WS now that we are out of the running. Of course, we are also happy to see that the Cardinals and Yankees also won't be winning it this year.

I don't feel like going through all the gory details of the Cubs series against the Diamondbacks. It can be summed up in two numbers. 2 and 23. The first number is the number of hits the Cubs had with runners in scoring position. The second number is the number of times the Cubs had a chance to get a hit with runners in scoring position. That is a success rate of 8.7%, or rather a failure rate of 91.3%. You don't win series with a stat like that.

So, even though I won't watch another game this year, here are the only interesting stories I can come up with for the remaining playoff teams.

If the Indians win the AL, this World Series will have the worst television ratings since.....well, since the television was invented. It doesn't even matter who wins the NL, not a lot of interest in either Arizona or Colorado teams.

The only thing I am rooting for is to have the Rockies sweep every series they are in. They already have gone 17-1 over their last 18 games. If they can sweep the Diamondbacks and sweep the World Series, they will have finished the season 25-1, going 14-1 in their last 2 weeks of the regular season just to make it into the playoffs. That would be pretty cool.

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I always like a good baseball movie. Field of Dreams, The Natural, Bull Durham are a few of the all-time greats. This weekend is the premiere of The Final Season. Based on the lack of hype I am hearing about this, it probably won't challenge those others in commercial success. But, I will definitely go see it as soon as possible (might be tough with a new baby in the house) because it is a story told about a team from the county where I grew up in Iowa.

The state folded the Norway high school into my high school (Benton Community) in the fall of 1991 (beginning of my junior year). This movie is the story of the summer of 1991 and the last season of baseball for the Norway high school, a team that had won 19 state titles before that year.

I am a little concerned that my school will come off looking like the villains. My concern was obviously shared by the current administrators that would not allow the name Benton Community to be used in the film. But, I obviously had nothing to do with the consolidation, so I don't care too much if Benton looks bad.

I will say that the Benton baseball team got much better in 1992 when the Norway boys joined our group. We didn't win state, but we at least got closer. I was relegated to the bench so that our school's quarterback could take my rightful place in right field. Maybe I should blame the Norway boys for that because if they hadn't been there, the QB may have played the infield, which was dominated by the Norway players.

Anyway, I encourage people to see it. Two of my Norway baseball buddies, Tim Arp and Jim Schulte, are portrayed in the movie, at 3B and 2B respectively. They may have been better ballplayers than me, but I could dominate them when it came to throwing the APBA dice.

Expect 3 More Games

The Cubs lost Game 2 of the best-of-5 series against the Arizona Diamondbacks last night by a score of 8-4. (I won't dissect the game like I did yesterday - the problem was we gave up 8 runs, simple as that). That puts them in an 0-2 hole as the series heads to Chicago for the next 2 games. As a Cubs fan, I went into the playoffs hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst (heartbreak is easier to handle if you are prepared for that possibility). But getting swept is not the "worst" that I had in mind.

I fully expect the series to go 5 games, and here is why. The Cubs getting swept out of the playoffs is not painful enough. It's not like being up 2-0 in a best of 5 and losing the next 3 (1984) or being up 3-1 in a best of seven and again losing the next 3 (2003). If the Cubs were going to disappoint their fans, they would certainly do it in a much more painful way.

They tried to collapse at the end of the season - knowing that if they lost a 3 1/2 game lead in the last week, that would certainly invoke some pain. But once they saw the Brewers weren't going to hold up their end of the bargain, they decided they might as well just win a couple. Now that they are in the playoffs, they can't just go 3 and out.

So, expect them to pull out victories in both games over the weekend in Chicago, thereby ratcheting up the pain factor on a loss in game 5. But, if they do win games 3 and 4, I would actually expect them to win again in game 5 as the young Diamondbacks could start feeling the pressure of an elimination game and would have just endured a loss by their ace pitcher in game 4. Besides, the Cubs know that a game 5 loss in the first round would not be nearly as painful as a game 7 loss in the next round, with the World Series in sight.

Cubs fans - be prepared.

Thursday Morning Manager

The Cubs dropped game 1 of the NL Divisional Series last night 3-1. I will blame the loss on a lack of clutch hitting (Cubs were 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position and twice had the leadoff hitter on second base with nobody out and neither time did he even get to third). The Diamondbacks were 0-for-4 with RISP, but did get a sacrifice fly and two solo home runs. That is the real reason we lost.

Now let me share why people will say we lost. Most media people will say Piniella pulled Zambrano too early, choosing to take him out after 6 innings and 85 pitches with the game tied at 1 and the Diamondbacks having only one person reach 2nd base since the first inning (and that was the solo homer in the 4th).

But, I will argue that Piniella did not take Zambrano out soon enough. He let the pitcher bat with the bases loaded and 2 out after the Cubs had tied the game in the top of the 6th inning. Granted, Zambrano had doubled his first time up and hit a hard line drive to shortstop his second time up, but I would much rather have Daryle Ward and his .327 average at the plate with a chance to drive in some big runs that leave it up to the pitcher.

I mean, if he had the faith in the bullpen to pull Zambrano after 6 innings and 85 pitches, why not have that same faith after 5 innings? To me, the big mistake was not using a pinch hitter, and I will agree with everyone else that once that mistake was made, it was compounded by pulling Zambrano after only 1/2 more inning. He was dominating the D-Backs.

Piniella pulled Zambrano because he is planning on using him on Sunday for Game 4 after only 3 days rest (a risk in and of itself). But, a Chicago Tribune writer put it best today when he said in the playoffs the rules are 1) Win the game that's in front of you, and 2) There is no rule #2.

Ted Lilly vs. Doug Davis tonight - a battle of lefties. Cubs need to get this one or it could be a very short postseason.