The Cubs’ Even-Year Magic, Fun Cubs Outtakes, and Other Bullets

We have arrived in 2018, otherwise known as the year that the Cubs’ absorption of the even-year-BS from the Giants in 2016 fully shows itself. Clear your calendars for that final week of October.

  • You know, we probably did joke at the time that the Cubs beat the Giants in the 2016 NLDS – the first even year the Giants would not win the World Series since 2008 – that the Cubs had taken the even-year-BS power from the Giants. If the Cubs go on to win it all this year, I think the Giants should have to deliver the Commissioner’s Trophy to the Cubs after the World Series ends. And then the Cubs get to drink the blood of the vanquished.
  • (Photo by David J. Phillip-Pool/Getty Images)

  • That kinda got me down a wormhole exploring past World Series stuff, and did you know, the Cubs have the 10th most World Series victories in MLB history! … but they’re actually ahead of only one organization that is more or less as old as they are: the Phillies, who’ve won just two World Series (1980, 2008). I actually didn’t realize the full depths of the Phillies’ organizational futility, perhaps because I grew up in an era where they were fairly competitive for the bulk of my baseball-watching life. (I also didn’t realize that part of that is because it took the Phillies 10 years to integrate after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, making them the last team to do so, and yielding some rough years.)
  • The Cubs had some fun off the field in 2017:
  • If you missed it yesterday, a bit of a year-ender, and a thank you to you folks.
  • Amazon knows what’s up: the deal of the day? Fitness equipment of all types.
  • It finally happened: the Bears fired John Fox. To read up on that, and to track the coaching search ahead, make sure you follow our sister site The Ten-Yard Line on Twitter, and like it on Facebook:
  • META: It wouldn’t be a new year without a new issue to deal with, eh? There’s a bizarre issue affecting some users where the home page you see is an old version (i.e., new posts are not showing up on the home page for you). Technologically speaking, the “old” home page you’re seeing doesn’t exist anymore on the BN server – when it updates for a new post, that old version is gone. So what you’re seeing is a cached version of the home page that is saved in your browser. Our server is supposed to tell your browser, “Hey, dude, there’s a new version of the home page, update yours,” but apparently there is something glitchy going on that it is not telling all browsers that. I’m working on it (New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are not great times to need technical support, it turns out). In the meantime, you may be able to help yourself out by clearing your browser’s cache and refreshing the page.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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