Baffoe: Hello, Cubs Nervousness, My Old Friend
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) The Chicago Cubs are going to the playoffs, everybody.
That will be ensured at some point Friday or later in the weekend with either any win over the Pittsburgh Pirates or any San Francisco Giants loss. Chicago will be joyful, as it and the team should be.
"As big as it could possibly be," manager Joe Maddon said regarding what the celebration will be. "You celebrate achievement all the time. So I love the fact that we celebrate every night. It has this bonding effect among the group. And then when you go beyond that, celebrate just a little bit harder."
And because it's a weekend when this will occur, Wrigleyville will be extra drunk, vomity and wretchedly brotastic, though Chicagoans might think that impossible. My stomach, meanwhile, will fill with a familiar mix of fire and ice while my brain repeats, "This is good. This is fun."
As someone who has hitched his wagon to the clown car that has been the Cubs for three-plus decades, please understand how I have been conditioned to not do well in a situation like this. Also know that rationally I approach this not as glass-half-full — even though the Cubs are fully capable of winning the World Series in 2015 (that tastes so odd to say).
But it's one freakin' game now -- 162 gallops in a marathon will come to a fork in the road leading either to some more games or to golf. If I were a seasoned Yankee fan or St. Louis cosmopolite (ha), the one-game playoff might be seen more as interesting novelty.
No, though. This is like a Glengarry Glen Ross scenario without the second prize of the steak knives.
Even though I know very well in my mind that the current form of the Cubs is all about sustained success, the anxiety is unavoidable. Remember Anthony Rizzo's prediction back in January?
"It's going to happen this year," he said. "It's what we're going to do. We're going to play, we're going to win the NL Central. Quote me on that. We should be the team, with all due respect to every other team, they're just as good talent wise, but we're going to do some things this year. That's what we're expecting. That's what we're putting our sights on. We're not going to accept anything else."
That was so cute, like a scrappy little kid who determines to build the bestest soap box for the derby ever even though you know he's not ready yet to wield a hammer. But then he turned out to be right.
(But he said "win the NL Central" and they didn't do that -- yes, thank you, Cardinals fans, we get that.)
And now the Cubs have overachieved even with all the young talent they have and the reality of what is and what should be for a long time is all happening so fast and it's exciting yet sudden and I'm lightheaded and need a paper bag.
Maddon has preached all season about keeping it loose. The Maddonism "Never let the pressure exceed the pleasure" became an early mantra for this club. As this team that most fans and pundits figured was a year away is now going to win 90-plus games, it certainly worked.
But what about the pressure for me? I'm the kid who bawled in 1989 before YouTube could make him a viral star for a week. I'm the foolish teen who genuinely thought Mark Clark, Kevin Tapani, and Kerry Wood could match John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux.
2003. 2007. 2008. None of those years, those players, those woulda-coulda-shouldas means a thing to 2015.
But 2015 doesn't yet mean much to built-up scar tissue. It doesn't mean much to a certain Pavlovian reflex this kind of fan has conditioned in his chemistry.
As a documented subscriber to the Theo Epstein plan, I fully understand that whatever the outcome of this postseason, it has zero bearing on a 2016 team that will be better and more maturd than this one -- and ditto for 2017 and beyond. A playoff-steel-cage Mad-Max-two-men-enter-one-man-leave-Frank-Dux-Bloodsport-kumite-MLB-torturous-niche-sudden-death game doesn't much allow for perspective, though.
This is going to be fun. Three hours of October evening fun, with the Chicago Cubs.
Very real, very sudden, very happy, very terrifying fun.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
