Swept Away

Alright, now I will write about the Cubs, after the Mets swept them in four, the last nail in the Cubbies’ coffin being an 8-3 spanking in front of the Wrigley faithful last night.  The home team was outpitched, outhit and, dare I say, out-managed throughout the series.  When a Mets’ team with all of 51 stolen bases in the regular season steals seven bases in four games, you’ve got problems, right, Joe?  And we won’t even mention the four homeruns by Daniel “Who He?” Murphy.

There was no Maddon Magic in the dugout for the NLCS.  That was evident when Maddon let reliever Hector Rondon go after a water fountain with a bat after pitching a scoreless inning in game three.  Rondon said he was trying to motivate his teammates.  This is where the manager should have told his player to act like a grownup.  Oh, well, playing the theme song from “Rocky” was a nice touch.

Conventional wisdom has the Cubs being good for a long time to come.  We’ll see.  Kyle Schwarber looked more at home on a soccer field than in left, and Kris Bryant had some shaky moments at third; bad gloves could lead to sophomore slumps.  And the pitching will have to be addressed.  The Cubs are short two starters and probably two righty relievers of the power variety.  Sportswriters are chanting David Price, but that would be expensive.  If Theo Epstein is smart, and I think he is, he’s going to trade for young pitching instead.  Might I interest him in a package deal involving White Sox starter Jose Quintana and reliever Nate Jones, the 100-mph dart-thrower?  As a mean-spirited Sox fan, what I want is two-fold: the Cubs forcing Sox ownership to upgrade the team or give up, and sell.  I also want the North Siders to face more heartbreak in the postseason, year after year until, oh, 2108 or thereabouts.

But I do have a heart.  Clare came home last night.  Valpo has a short break at midterms, which our daughter is using to go see her boyfriend in Syracuse; nothing like getting up at 5:30 AM to say Good-bye before the cab took her to O’Hare.  Some hours before that, with the Mets ahead by a comfortable 6-0 margin, we all went to the Tastee-Freez on 26^th Street for ice cream.  It was a preternaturally warm evening, which made the neon signs glow all the more and my medium chocolate taste extra rich.  Ahead of us in line was a Cub fan in his Rizzo t-shirt and tattoos.  We didn’t talk baseball at all.

But we knew the score.