This past Wednesday was “Back To The Future: Part II Day.” For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the Trilogy. For those who have, in the second movie of the series, Marty McFly and Doc Brown travelled 30 years into the future and arrived on October 21, 2015. It was on this day that Marty discovered that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.
Many fans of the movies posted
on Facebook, had BTTF parties and all the other things that fanatics do. Heck,
even Doc and Marty showed up on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Unfortunately, they were
too late. The Cubs had lost Game 4 of the NLCS 8-3 and were swept by the New
York Mets just minutes earlier.
But it was inevitable that the
prediction made when the movie was made back in 1989 was never going to be able
to save the Cubs and their fans from more than a century of misery. The sweep
was just the latest in a long list of disappointments associated with the
franchise.
The Cubs played in the World
Series for three straight years (1906-08) and won the final two of those
series. At the time no one would have ever thought that the Cubs would never win
another one. Not only the losing has been heartbreaking, but the way they have
lost has tugged at the emotions of Cubs’ fans for 108 years.
The north siders would lose the World
Series in 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935 and 1945. It’s the ’45 Series that the
Cubs’ curse, “The Curse of the Billy Goat,” was born. To make a long story
short, a saloon owner in Chicago would bring his goat to the games at Wrigley
Field. During the World Series against Detroit, he was asked to leave and take
his goat with him as the smell was bothering others in attendance. As he was
leaving the ballpark, he is quoted as saying, “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win
no more.”
Take if for what it’s worth, but
to this point, 70 years later, the Cubs have not been back to the World Series.
In fact, they didn’t even make the postseason until 1984, which wasn’t even the
first of the heartaches for the Chicago fans.
The first was in 1969, the first
year each of the Major Leagues was divided into two divisions. On September 2,
the Cubs led the second place New York Mets in the NL East by five games. A week later, a Cubs’
losing streak and a Mets’ winning streak saw the New Yorkers surge into first
place. But the slump didn’t end there. By the end of the season, the Cubs would
sink to finish eight games back of the Mets, who went on to win the World
Series.
In the 1984 NLCS, the Cubs took
the first two games in the best of five series, but lost three straight against
the San Diego Padres, the final game on an error on a ground ball to first
baseman Leon Durham, that opened the floodgates to a four run seventh inning
and a 6-3 San Diego win.
Next up was the 1989, when the
Cubs were only able to win one game in the NLCS against the San Francisco
Giants. After that was 1998, the year that Sammy Sosa would challenge Mark McGwire of
the St. Louis Cardinals for the single-season home run record. Sosa lost that
battle, but the Cubs finished tied for the Wild Card. After a thrilling
tie-breaker game win against the Giants, the Cubs whimpered out in the NLDS,
being swept by the Atlanta Braves in three games.
Next up was 2003, when the Cubs
got the hopes of their fans up high with a win over the Braves in the NLDS in
five games and took a three to one series lead in the NLCS against the Florida
Marlins. But we know what happened. Three loses in a row, Bartman, a costly
error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez, and eight run inning in Game 6 and a lack luster performance in Game 7.
Two division titles came in
back-to-back seasons in 2007 and 2008 and had fans raising their hopes again.
The hopes crashed with back-to-back sweeps in the NLDS (at the hands of the
Arizona Diamondbacks in ’07 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in ’08).
And then there was 2015. They
finished with the third best record in baseball, won the wild card game against
Pittsburgh and then took out the Cardinals in the NLDS in four games.
Hopes raised again….hopes dashed again. They’re the Cubs after all. It
couldn’t have ended any other way.
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