Everyone loves an underdog. And everyone is seemingly rooting for the Chicago Cubs in the postseason.
But while those two things may be true, they are not or, at least, should not be in any way related. Because the Chicago Cubs are not underdogs. The Chicago Cubs are a big market team with unlimited resources that has failed, year after year, for the past 106 years. The story of Cubs history is not one of an overlooked band of scrappers always coming up short, it’s a tale of high-profile, highly-paid and over-exposed losers.
The 2015 Cubs could change that fact, of course. These Cubs still remain 11 tough wins short of winning the franchise’s first championship since 1908. But even if they manage to pull it off, it shouldn’t be considered as some sort of grand upset, the sports equivalent of David felling Goliath. Because the Cubs are Goliath: they’re huge and powerful and associated with losing. Yet the “underdog” name sticks with them.
Even their supposedly brilliant manager Joe Maddon used the term when he was hired before the season. “Who doesn’t love the underdog?” he said at the time. No one, Joe. Well, except for you, apparently, or you wouldn’t have left the Tampa Bay Rays for the Cubs.
If you wanted an actual postseason underdog, the team the Cubs just dispatched in the wildcard game (the Cubs were favored in the game, by the way) better fit the description. The Pirates had those 20 consecutive losing seasons from 1993 through 2012, an American professional sports record and a feat in failure almost as sadly impressive as 106 years of going without a World Series title. But – unlike the Cubs – Pittsburgh has a payroll in the bottom half of Major League Baseball and plays in a city barely one-tenth the size of Chicago.
But the Pirates got crushed in the wildcard game by the powerful Cubs (in true underdog fashion). So If you’re looking for a team still in the playoffs who better fits the underdog role than the Cubs, take a look at the Kansas City Royals. Or even the Mets. Both teams trail the Cubs in payroll and play second fiddle in their region – the Royals in Missouri and the Mets in New York – to more successful franchises. Heck, even the supposedly evil Cardinals, Chicago’s divisional round opponent and the team most baseball fans are rooting against the most this postseason (and every postseason), has a smaller payroll than Chicago and hails from a city 12% the size. But you don’t find anyone calling the Cardinals underdogs. Well, anyone outside of St Louis, at least.
Cubs ace Jake Arrieta perfectly captures his team and his franchise.
Yes, two years ago he couldn’t even get Triple-A batters out. But that wasn’t because he didn’t have any talent and was unable to fool professional hitters with some sad 83mph fastball and a weak slider. No, for years he was a top pitching prospect, and one of the gems of the Baltimore Orioles organization, a muscled, athletic guy with lights-out stuff who was blessed with a power arm that hits the high 90s with ease. But for whatever reason, Arrieta was terrible. A joke. He was the Cubs of pitchers.
Now he’s the best pitcher in baseball. The Cubs are 14-0 in his last 14 starts. After his performance on Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, he’s the only pitcher in baseball history to throw a postseason shutout with double-digit strikeouts and zero walks.
Arrieta isn’t an overlooked underdog whose success can’t be explained. He’s a guy with all the tools and all the potential who lost and lost and lost and lost some more ... and now has suddenly, fairly late in his baseball career, figured it all out. In one man, he’s the 1909-2014 Cubs and the 2015 Cubs.
Of course, like with all good teams, the Chicago Cubs are not a one-man team or a one-man organization.
The Cubs are owned by Tom Ricketts, an investment banking CEO whose family wealth is estimated at a billion dollars, which puts them on Forbes 400 list. He is the son of J Joseph Ricketts, the founder of Ameritrade. Congratulations to him on all his financial success, but the Tom Ricketts story is not an underdog tale.
The franchise’s president of baseball operations is Theo Epstein, who won two World Series titles while running the Red Sox a decade ago, is still only 41 years old and is widely considered to be a baseball management genius. Can a franchise be an underdog if they are run by the top mind in their sport with nearly unlimited resources at his disposal?
The Cubs are paying their manager, Maddon, $5m a year. Jon Lester is one year into a six-year, $155m contract. Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Addison Russell, Jorge Soler, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro are, or were at one time, all big-time, highly-touted prospects. The Cubs are underdogs the same way a Victoria’s Secret model is an underdog on Tinder. They’ve just repeatedly messed up what should be a sure thing.
The Cubs franchise is not cursed any more than they are an underdog either. Unless you believe in the “Curse of Underperforming Players and Poor Management Decisions” or believe karma will forever leave Cubs fans unhappy for how Steve Bartman was treated in 2003 for interfering with a foul ball in a game the Cubs players were already well on their way to losing.
Root for the Cubs all you want. Of course. Or don’t. I don’t care. Just realize that in pulling for them, you’re throwing in with an underperformer, not an underdog. You’re just rooting for a lovable loser to stop losing – and the lovable part can be debated.
Also realize that if the Cubs do win it all this year, if they do break through and finally get that championship, with their talent and their resources, they’re probably going to win a lot more in the coming years. Because that’s what franchises like these Chicago Cubs do: win championships and crush the hearts of underdogs.
