“I don’t want to sound like an asshole or anything, but we really haven’t done anything yet.” – Jon Lester Lester’s words following his final start of the regular season on Saturday probably encapsulate the central question of being a Cubs fan in 2016. How success is determined is a different measure for the Cubs this year, […]
Author: Jared Wyllys
Jake Arrieta, Number Three Starter?
Cubs fans should be well-versed in the idea of cognitive reframing, even if they don’t know to call it that. It’s the need to find positive alternatives to negative experiences, and for Cubs fans, that’s a need that creeps up with regularity. This idea gets its name from a psychological practice developed in the 1960s […]
Game 150 Recap: Cubs 5 Reds 2
There’s a scene in the 1990 movie Awakenings when Robert De Niro’s character stands outside for the first time after decades in a catatonic state. He looks around with a sort of bewildered smile and remarks, “What a beautiful place the Bronx has turned out to be.” He says it almost like it’s caught him off […]
Series Preview: Cubs vs. Reds, September 19-21
With the strange weekend series against the Brewers behind them, the Cubs stay at Wrigley to face the other team holding up the bottom of the NL Central standings. The past series was one of tempered celebration — both because winning the division has felt like an expected inevitability and step in the process toward […]
Game 146 Recap: Brewers 5 Cubs 4
Imagine telling yourself two years ago that you’d be quibbling over how the Cubs clinched the division, not that they had at all. And imagine that it would be the second year in a row that they’d be headed to the playoffs. How wonderfully bizarre. Like last season, the Cubs positioned themselves tonight to clinch their playoff spot […]
Series Preview: Cubs vs. Brewers, September 15-18
We know by now that this series is about clinching. We know by now that it’s rather unlikely that it won’t happen while the Milwaukee Brewers are in town. That’s a dubious honor for them to hold, sure, but with just over two weeks left of the regular season games to play before they are […]
Game 139 Recap: Brewers 2 Cubs 1
It is probably best, after a 2-1 loss to Milwaukee in which Jonathan Villar single-handedly outslugged the entire Cubs offense, to remember that the games carry little real weight for either team by now. And that the Cardinals lost, so the Cubs’ inevitable conquest of the NL Central is no farther away. Tonight Matt Garza […]
Jason Heyward and Andrew McCutchen’s Day(s) Off
Professional athletes deceive us. They deceive us every time they make the extraordinarily precise and difficult look simple and easy. Swinging at and even making contact with a major league fastball is an absurdity, after all. So few can do it at all, but when we watch someone like Jason Heyward or Andrew McCutchen do […]
Game 137 Recap: Cubs 7 Brewers 2
When Thom Brennaman sat in the Reds broadcast booth in April and muttered “Enough already,” into the microphone, he had probably forgotten for a moment that he was on the air and his words would hang above the Cubs season for months to come. His private frustration was vocalized, and it’s captured the general sentiment […]
Series Preview: Cubs vs. Pirates, Aug. 29-31
Earlier in the season, writing the Pirates out of the playoff picture probably would have been a safe bet. Not a sure thing, but especially when they sold off their closer at the deadline, things did not appear as if Pittsburgh would be getting even their usual one-and-done playoff appearance. But that’s part of the […]