Oct. 23--One of the cooler moments of the postseason came late Wednesday night at Wrigley Field after the Cubs' 8-3 loss when manager Joe Maddon and his players emerged from the home dugout.
A couple of thousand people in Cubs gear who didn't want the season to end without saying goodbye stuck around long after the Mets celebrated winning the National League pennant. They were rewarded one last time when Maddon and every member of the most exciting Cubs team in years saluted the crowd, tipping blue caps and blowing kisses. The gesture was genuine and the mutual affection real as "Let's Go Cubs!" broke out in parts of the ballpark.
Human nature says Cubs fans will be less forgiving of the team's next four-game losing streak.
Everything changes now. Every season of the Theo Epstein regime just became a little more sacred, every loss heavier than when nobody paid attention to the standings before Memorial Day. Every one of 162 games now will matter in 2016 to the masses thinking World Series-or-bust.
No longer are the Cubs ahead of schedule, nor will their success surprise anybody next season, least of all Chicagoans. When the Cubs report in February to Arizona for spring training, Maddon's toughest challenge in the months ahead will come from the Cardinals, the Pirates and the Expectations -- not necessarily in that order.
Has any baseball team in Chicago history carried as much hype into opening day as what will accompany the Cubs on April 5? It's one thing for a Cubs team to win 97 games when it was projected to hover around .500. It's another to begin an eight-month slog of a season knowing progress will be defined only by winning the pennant -- the new stakes. Four years after Epstein took over as team president, Cubbie Camelot looks ready for an encore. And the audience demands it.
Maddon, full-time manager, part-time life coach, possesses the perfect mindset to navigate the Cubs through such foreign terrain. He considers pressure a positive and remains allergic to stress. Mets counterpart Terry Collins called his buddy Maddon "the best manager in the game," shortly after beating him. He will have to be to keep the young Cubs in the proper mindset as Wrigleyville threatens to turn tenser than it was at any point during Maddon's first regular season. Can Alderman Tom Tunney propose a neighborhood ordinance against overreacting to Cubs losses?
The heavy weight of trying to live up to expectations can bury a team with weak leadership which, in part, caused the 2004 Cubs to collapse. That season felt like a continuation of the 2003 NLCS from the day it began, intensity and scrutiny arriving in April and staying for every homestand through September. No wonder those Cubs lost six of their final eight and blew a 1 1/2 -- game wild-card lead.
Admittedly, these Cubs seem different and better-equipped to blossom under what will be brighter lights. The only comparison comes in the anticipated atmosphere around the park and city more than the team in the clubhouse. Just as curses had nothing to do with the Mets eliminating the Cubs, the dysfunction of the 2004 Cubs bears little connection to the 2016 Cubs, aside from historical context. There are no clubhouse cancers on the current Cubs, no Sammy Sosa-like prima donnas to create tension. A sense of camaraderie among players at similar stages of their careers carries the day and growing up together shares any burden.
Anthony Rizzo, among the league leaders in perspective, sets an example others follow and distinguishes sensibly between work and play. It helps that the Cubs player with the highest ceiling, Kris Bryant, is the most low-maintenance. A core consisting of Rizzo, Bryant, Addison Russell, Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler and Javier Baez gives the Cubs every reason to believe, like their fans do, that anything is possible.
In that way, what happened in the NLCS drew a closer local parallel to the 2008-2009 Blackhawks than the 2004 Cubs. The Hawks under culture-changing, first-year coach Joel Quenneville and making their first trip to the Western Conference finals since 1995, went down to the Red Wings in five games but the experience proved valuable in the development of younger players they drafted and developed. The promise of the future muted the pain of the present.
The longer Epstein spoke at Thursday's eloquent, engaging season-ending news conference -- which could serve as an instructional video for Chicago's pro sports executives and college athletic directors -- the greater expectations grew. But so did confidence.
Epstein re-established pitching as the Cubs' top offseason priority. He believed the Cubs would return even hungrier after having their playoff appetite whetted. When describing the rare chemistry of the Cubs, Epstein worried about "not screwing it up." When speaking about Jake Arrieta's breakout season and Kyle Schwarber's 365-day odyssey from the instructional league to Cubs lore, his words revealed emotion.
When recalling the toast he made to everyone responsible for such a rewarding season, he sounded genuinely touched.
"We thanked them for the journey," Epstein said.
Raise your glasses to the Cubs' journey.
Now, it becomes all about the destination.
dhaugh@tribpub.com
