Baffoe: It Ends Tonight With A Cubs World Series Win
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) It's over. It has to be, right?
The Chicago Cubs have won the World Series.
No, wait, come back. You already read the sentence, so ex-ing out of the window now is futile if you're trying to prevent any bad juju you think that the most taboo of premature exclamation declarative sentences in Chicago can bring.
Consider the feeling you had watching Game 6 when Kris Bryant went 433 feet deep in the first inning Tuesday. You involuntarily exhaled, right? Then when the Cleveland outfielders let an Addison Russell fly ball drop for a two-run double. How that sort of odd thing is supposed to happen to the Cubs, not for them. It streaked across your mind like a mouse behind the fridge -- "They're gonna do it." And then your ornery superstition punched yourself in the brain and told it to shut up.
Then Russell hit a grand slam two innings later. The Cubs were up 7-0 en route to a 9-3 win, and there was a strange calm that settled in your gut that today you're trying to antagonize because you don't know any better.
"After Kris put us up early and being up 7-0 after three, I knew that is all we were going to need," winning pitcher Jake Arrieta said.
Because he's smart. And calm like you were at that time. Harness that calm as best you can today into tonight. So calm that you revert to nitpicking Joe Buck's broadcast. I laugh because the much mis-hated Buck is going to be the national TV voice that goes down in history calling the first Cubs championship in 108 years.
You should laugh, too, laugh at the likes of former Cubs pitcher LaTroy Hawkins blasting umpire Joe West last night.
See? One of the most reviled Cubs of the last 50 years, Hawkins is just like us. All that negativity of the past is going away forever.
Make your game plans and position your voodoo dolls and iron the Damon Berryhill jersey. But also start planning for your new life -- the one as post-2016 Cubs fan. Because the world is about to be different. The World Series ends tonight, and the Cubs will be the ones celebrating.
We're back at the same crossroads for, oh, the fourth time or so this postseason. That intersection of panic and "Oh, yeah, this Cubs team is different," where you end up taking the left turn and realize you were so silly for freaking out at their playoff losses. The Cubs were down 3-1, and now there's a Game 7. Insert a Marlins or Warriors-Cavs joke here if you like, because they'll be all over the Internet and TV today. Laugh, too, because the joke is on Cleveland on Wednesday night.
"It's correct and apt that we would go seven games," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said after his team won handily Tuesday, like someone trying so hard not to laugh at how much he friggin' owns this thing that he uses not-quite-right-but-not-quite-wrong diction.
Now, 2 a.m.-pizza-party Maddon, sleep-til-11 a.m.-on-gameday Maddon, use-Aroldis-Chapman-up-five-runs-in-the-seventh Maddon won't say it, but he knows it. He's about to be the guy who managed a World Series-clinching game for the Chicago damn Cubs. This is something that we all are hours, minutes, seconds away from experiencing.
Anyone can talk about how Cleveland must be demoralized heading into tonight. I don't even care about their mindsets, because everything Cubs supersedes that. Kyle Schwarber is in the lineup to complement Bryant, Russell and Anthony Rizzo, who are seeing the ball well. Kyle Hendricks is on the mound, and no player on the Cubs better embodies the cerebral, cool reserve that has calmly sailed this team across the long lake of a baseball season to the ultimate game. Then there are three other starting pitchers in John Lackey, Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta available out of the bullpen, along with poor Chapman, who social media was so concerned about being misused in Game 6, when he came on in the seventh inning with the Cubs up 7-2. He threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings.
"I brought him in earlier because that was the part of the order he had to get out," Maddon said in a postgame interview on Fox. "I did not want the game to get away at that particular moment. So that worked out well."
That's Maddon-ese for "Kiss my ass, people who forget I'm managing in the World Series."
"I was good with Joe using me any way he wanted to," Chapman said through a team translator. "I will still be ready for tomorrow. If I wake up tomorrow and the arm is different, I will be honest about it. Otherwise we are in the last game of the season, I will be available."
"But what about Corey Kluber?" you gasp dramatically. OK, let's get number-y. Kluber has beaten the Cubs twice this series, with his first start being utterly dominant and the second good but less so.
Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer examined how playoff starters in the wild-card era have fared on three days rests from start one to start two (prior to this year's LCS). Some of his findings:
-- ERAs went from 3.92 to 4.74,
-- OPS against went from .654 to .680 and
-- K rate went from 16.7 percent to 16.2 percent
Of the eight pitchers to start three games in the World Series since 1976, "They have posted a 1.13 ERA in their first outing, a 2.15 ERA in their second and a 3.25 mark in their third," per Jay Jaffe of SI.com.
Now, a 3.25 ERA isn't shabby for a third start in nine days on the game's biggest stage. It's also beatable. And -- as you are well aware, though like to forget -- this is a Cubs team that's really tough to fool after so many times. Ask a twitchy Josh Tomlin today.
Cleveland's special Mortal Kombat combo death move is Kluber and Andrew Miller. They've used it twice, and the Cubs ain't dead.
They won't be at the end of the night either. I had Cubs in seven. I feel fine. My biggest worry is not knowing how I'm going to feel as the Cubs record the final out. That's a good worry, though.
Join me, won't you?
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.
