By clinching their postseason spot before any other team, the Cubs earned a special privilege: first crack at The Bandwagon Conversation. Even as people were gathering in celebration around a vacant Wrigley Field, others were noting archly that many of them were Johnnies-come-lately who only started following the team when it was clear this year’s […]
Tag: Cubs
Cubs Win!: A History of Cubs Playoff Clinchers
It’s undeniable that some of the fun—nay, a big part of the fun of watching a good baseball team is counting down toward that special day when they clinch their playoff spot. The Cubs have now done it! So pop the champagne bottles and cover your favorite media member from head to toe in plastic. […]
Winning is Fun: A Brief History
Winning is fun. The Cubs rolled through the early portion of their schedule, and used that cushion to weather a midseason blip in late June and early July. Then they came roaring out of the All-Star break, and are now poised to win a tenth straight game. Every team experiences ebbs and flows over the […]
A New Bullpen Was A Need, Not A Luxury
“You kinda know going into the season that not everyone is going to perform as well as you hoped. It’s a lot of guys to expect them to perform at the level they were previously at; you can have injuries or poor performance, and so you kinda know that it might be an area you have to […]
The Cubs at 70: How’re They Doing?
The mighty Cubs struck out three times against their mortal enemy St. Louis Cardinals. This means that they are limping, somewhat, into the 70 game mark of the season. 70 games is an important demarcation line in the season is because this is the point where Russell Carleton, writing at the mothership, found that run differential stabilizes. […]
Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Cubs Struggle in Wintry Weather
Until a bit of a lull the last few games, the Cubs haven’t had a problem scoring runs this season. They’ve scored them every way you can imagine—patient at-bats, getting on base, hitting home runs, stealing the occasional bag, and so on. The Cubs work starting pitchers so hard, with only a handful of pitchers […]
World Series Shuffle? Not Yet, But Comparisons to Chicago Legends Begin to Appear
Editor’s note: Sometimes people just appear in your inbox. Such was the case with Martin Johnson, who’s best known as a jazz critic for the Wall Street Journal and a general feature writer at The Root. He’s also written about sports here and there, most notably at The Root and at Slate. Anyway, when he asked if we’d like to run […]
As Lackey Returns to St. Louis, a Look Back
It’s been weird, following the John Lackey story for the last few years. He was the villain of baseball, and just when you thought he couldn’t be any worse he totally redeemed himself—pitching well for the Red Sox to help them clinch their third World Series this millennium. He found his way to St. Louis and […]
Life at the Margins: A Cubs Championship, Probably
Over at the main site, our Editor-in-Chief, Rian Watt, writes a weekly-ish column called Life at the Margins. In this week’s edition, he explores the seven times since 1945 the Cubs have come closest to a championship. We thought you’d enjoy a preview here: The Cubs currently have a 12.3 percent chance to win the World […]
Increasingly, Youth Being Served in Chicago
It has seemed to me for a number of years that Major League Baseball is getting younger. Could you imagine, just a few years back, a hot prospect promotion engendering more fan interest than a marquee free agent signing? It happens these days. I recently wondered, though, whether the league’s greening is a phenomenon that shows up in […]