With the Cubs in a 3-0 hole in the NLCS, Joe Maddon has a tough task
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Version 0 of 1. CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs have been trying to relax for 107 years. Now, Joe Maddon gets his chance. No manager believes in relaxation as a road to victory more than Maddon. And no team has ever looked more uptight, or folded faster under pressure than the adorable (execution scheduled for dawn) Cubbies whom he now manages. The latest illustration of haunted Cubness that Maddon and this entire franchise must overcome was on view Tuesday night in Wrigley Field as the Cubs lost 5-2 to the underdog New York Mets to fall behind three games to none in the National League Championship Series. The tiebreaking run scored on a third-strike wild pitch that could have ended the sixth inning. Two more runs arrived in the seventh on jittery plays by rookies that were scored as hits — a double-clutch on a grounder fielded by Kris Bryant and a liner that clanked off the wrist and elbow of Kyle Schwarber. [Murphy, deGrom give Mets a commanding 3-0 NLCS lead] Now Chicago faces elimination — by humiliating sweep — Wednesday night. For four generations, maybe five generations in some families, Chicago has watched teams with “Cubs” across their chests unravel in just this kind of game. No, not games where the Cubs have a chance to win a pennant, like 1984 or 2003. Or a World Series, like 1945. This is another distinct kind of Cub collapse — all part of the same ugly fabric that must, someday, some way, be ripped asunder. Since 1910, the Cubs have had seven postseason series where they’ve fallen behind two games to none. That is a test of nerves and grit, too. Five times they have been swept. One win (twice) was their best attempt at retaliation. The way the Cubs confront the rest of this NLCS, and their awful but not impossible odds, can help them, too. Maddon, as is his rule, acted as though nobody should ever sweat the small stuff in a mere baseball game and, so far, he’s never seen anything that wasn’t small stuff. Part pose? If so, he’s mastered it, not just in words, which many can do, but in every gesture of his manner where, like Joe Torre, he looks as if he’s already digested the past, doesn’t need antacids and is simply focused on Game 4. “I’m really happy it’s not a five-game series,” Maddon said. After complimenting the Mets’ play, he added, “Otherwise, it’s win on Wednesday — business as usual. Take it from there.” That’s nice. But Wrigley Field has offered us too many nights like this. The totality of them is enormous. Watching the Cubs in the playoffs is like rooting for a dynamite juggler on a roller-coaster. Chicago fans cheered and roared, but underneath every sound, no matter how loud, was the undertone of extremely nice people simply begging and pleading. As the T-shirts on fans all around Wrigley proclaimed, “Just One Before I Die.” So, no pressure. What happens here on Wednesday is just a microcosm of a far bigger issue for the Cubs, both this year and for their next several years: How do they cope with their hideous though “friendly” legacy? At least the Cubs now have a manager with an attitude, an entire approach to the game that gives them hope. But, let’s be honest, only hope. These are the Cubs and the weight — like the wait — is great. In 1984, as the Cubs played a winner-take-all game to reach the World Series, I watched a five-hop ground ball go between the legs of Cubs first baseman Leon Durham, even though he was on one knee just to prevent that possibility. There was just enough space for a baseball to fit. But it did. “I’m not going to think about it,” Durham told several of us afterward, “but it’ll stay on my mind.” Why not just carve those words in the ivy on the outfield walls? The Cubs haven’t been thinking about not winning the World Series since 1908, but, somehow, it still stays on their minds.” Always. Enter Maddon. If he isn’t the guy, just give me 2108 in the office pool. My ancestors can collect. “In baseball, man, you’ve got to be in the present tense and be tension-free,” said Maddon before Game 3. “I learned that in a roundabout way. And that’s where I’m at.” How “roundabout?” Long ago, Maddon, who also played football in his youth, was wound as tight as anybody. As a manager in Midland, Tex., in ’86, he was so mad after one loss that, the next morning, he bought copies of every newspaper in the county. Then he cut out the classified ads and “papered” his clubhouse with them, even the men’s room stall, which showed what jobs were available in San Antonio. “I told my players those were your alternatives to not playing baseball well and hard,” Maddon said on Tuesday. “And that was a mistake . . . I was wrong . . . I’ve never seen an uptight moment be beneficial to any group, never. Never.” To counteract that tendency, Madden sometimes cooks huge clubhouse meals for his players or brings in unexpected animals, including once a very large snake. On Sunday evening, after his Cubs, 97-game winners in the regular season, lost to the Mets for the second time, the theme song from “Rocky” blared from his manager’s office. Then his Game 3 had no drastic lineup shake-up. “The moment you [make a change], the players feel it. They think something is wrong,” said Maddon, who only made one lineup move, putting Jorge Solar (more power) in right field. Solar homered for that 2-2 tie. All this seems reasonable. But baseball has argued for generations about the proper approach to World Series or postseason baseball. Do you keep everything “normal,” trust your proven 162-game ability? That, for example, has been the Nationals attitude the last four years — two of them with Davey Johnson whose theories on relaxation and confidence were much like Maddon. Dave Martinez, Maddon’s bench coach, may be a candidate for the now-open Nats job. He’d probably go a similar route. Or do you actually try to amp up emotion, embrace an underdog role, pick a strategy to attack a specific foe and actually utter the word “momentum.” The Mets are choosing more of Method Two. [ALCS: Dickey implodes, and the Blue Jays-Mets trade looks lopsided] “We kind of changed the way we looked at the game [in New York] . . . not going to be that many home runs . . . get a run here and there,” said Mets Manager Terry Collins, whose teams stole only four bases in its last 32 regular season games, yet stole four in the first two games against the Cubs, who have trouble stopping the running game. Then Collins said that, here at cozy Wrigley Field, such stealing might stop. Yet it didn’t: the first Met to reach base was thrown out stealing. Why keep running? Momentum. “That’s a great word to use,” said Collins. “There is momentum. And it carries on.” In the sixth inning, tied at 2, the Mets ran again. Swift slugger Yoenis Cespedes stole third. Then, in a moment that almost demanded that the new modern scoreboard in right field flash “Cubness Incarnate,” Cespedes scored on what should have been an inning-ending strikeout of Michael Conforto. Instead, the breaking ball in the dirt bounced past catcher Miguel Montero for a run-scoring wild pitch. Yes, the most famous third strike that ever got past a catcher as a crucial run scored was a passed ball committed by Mickey Owen, whose flub contributed to the Dodgers loss in the ’41 World Series. What was Owen’s next team after he left Brooklyn? Come on, do you have to ask? The Cubs. Good luck, Joe. |