NEWSLETTER
Now it really is win-or-go-home. The Cubs were in a position yesterday where losing to the Brewers would not end their season. It sucked, thoroughly, but it didn’t end the Cubs’ season. Now, a loss will.
Cole Hamels, who came to the Cubs from a lifeless Rangers team, still has the optimism flowing, telling Patrick Mooney, “This is a do-or-die moment, but at the same time, we get a second chance. This is one of the best environments to play in and we’re very fortunate we get to do it again.”
It’s weird to think of the Cubs as fortunate when they had a division lead for months and then lost that division on the final (extra) day of the regular season. Heck, if the Cubs had lost the division a few days earlier, they’d be in this exact same spot, perhaps feeling no good fortune at all.
And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that the Cubs are getting a second life today. For as much as yesterday FELT like the end of things – good or bad – it was also kind of just a free shot at heading to the NLDS without having to face the one-game Wild Card Game. The Cubs didn’t get it, so they do the thing that all second place teams hope to have a chance to do. Is that good fortune? Maybe. Maybe not. But I can see the perspective.
It’s a perspective, mind you, that the Rockies could be coming in with, too, after losing a divisional tiebreaker yesterday to the Dodgers. Sure, they’ve had to fly all over the country the past few days, and sure, they were probably very disappointed to lose yesterday, but they get another crack at this thing. Just like the Cubs. And they might be feeling really fortunate today, too.
Or at least feeling like what has passed was unfortunate.
“We’re going to to the playoffs tomorrow,” Charlie Blackmon said. “That’s an amazing opportunity and we worked really hard to get here. Today was unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is we have a chance to win the World Series.”
The Rockies, like the Cubs, are still in this thing. There’s unquestionably some good fortune in there. They each get another chance. Consider the tribulations the Cubs have faced this year, and yet they still get a chance to move on and compete for the World Series. Yes. Yes, there is good fortune there.
Tonight’s game will be decided, however, by which team plays better, and I don’t want to imbue the outcome with anything supernatural that takes away from that simple truth. (Well, 90% of the time the team that plays better gets the win, anyway. Can’t exclude that 10% possibility of baseball baseballing you to death at the worst time.)
But when it comes to playing better, I don’t think it’s at all mystical or hippy to suggest that the team that comes into this game with the better mindset will be the one that plays the most closely to its latent abilities. Which team will be better able to set aside the disappointment of a division crown lost? To set aside the fear that tonight could be it, leaving nothing ahead but an offseason of recriminations? To leave behind thoughts of whatever good or bad fortune led you to this game, and to just let your ability shine with this pitch or this swing or this throw?
Fortune, they say, favors the bold. Maybe so. But … eh. Fortune seems a fickle beast, by its very nature designed to have no design at all. Sometimes the divine thumb finds you, sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe the Cubs really did have some tremendously good fortune to reach the 2018 NL Wild Card Game.
Tonight? It would be nice if the Cubs didn’t have to rely on any good fortune at all.
