Feb. 26--Wonder where the Cubs should wear the target. Under the logo on their chest? On a sleeve? On their back? Maybe on the seat of the pants where they are used to being kicked.
It is a different world now for baseball's favorite house pets, those harmless and inevitably accommodating darlings. Purr, purr, nice cubby.
Oddly, the earliest and loudest shot comes from a cartoon candidate for president, not that Donald Trump's pouty little caution to the Ricketts family had anything to do with baseball, but then so often the Cubs have little to do with baseball.
No longer. Not now. By every account that matters, this is the Year of the Cub, and the designation is spoken or written without irony or lament. So fixed is the notion that the Cubs are the best team in baseball that the only calculation left is to figure out why they are not.
So, consider this Trump business just a foul ball to left field, down there where ... well, no need to bring up old curses. Except it is impossible to consider the Cubs without curses, like witches without warts or thumbs without nails.
This one is the Curse of Expectation, a whole new kettle of fret. Where in other places conviction comes with flags and crowns, pennants and proof, the Cubs have wandered onto unfamiliar ground.
Not to diss The Plan. This is how it was supposed to go, after all, and faster than expected. A four-game fold to better Mets pitching just might have been a stunned collision with the unfamiliar -- one century at a time, after all -- but there is no turning back now.
Out where money speaks louder than words, at sports books and betting parlors, the Cubs are the favorites, not playoff favorites, not pennant favorites, World Series favorites. This is the team that finished third in its division. This is like finding a dinner jacket in the underwear drawer, a Rolls in the woodshed, a tiara in the toy box, and on and on like that. You get the idea. This is not the way we know it to be.
The Cubs got to 97 victories not by luck nor by disguising themselves as burglars sneaking in through the servants' door. They earned their success and the applause that came eagerly and widely.
Still, there was a sense of astonishment, a bit of waiting for Cub history to do its usual mischief. There was no great gratification in beating the Cubs, no need to bother about flukes.
Now to come into a season amid the racket of presumption, with strangers shouting encouragement, opponents primed to undo the promise and followers with fingers finally uncrossed, this may take some getting used to.
Pitching? The Cubs had it and now it is better. Two top starters are now three. Second base is by choice rather by trial. The outfield is better anchored, the manager is still a mixture of charm and wisdom and the team is a combination of the young and the willing, free of any lasting stain of failure.
I will not be the one who holds the giant watering can over the approaching parade. Let someone else be nagged by what we know, that competence is a fickle companion, that to say something is so is not the same as it being so.
Of the six playoff Cubs teams (excluding last year's) since the last Cub pennant, only one repeated, that ill-fated '08 bunch. The '84, '89 and '98 teams followed with losing seasons.
Though the teams of '07 and '08 were patched together for short success and not built for the long game like this one, the last time the Cubs won 97 games they fell off to 83 the next season and followed that with five straight losing seasons.
The shelf life of glory is longer for those to whom it comes so seldom. The Cubs are not the Yankees or the Red Sox, teams on whom demands weigh perpetually. They are not the Cardinals, or the rejuvenated Royals, not a team of long tradition or ordinary expectation. They are still the Cubs and any loud heartbeat always will be taken for thunder.
Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune.
