Being merely The Weekend for Everything, the Cubs’ little jaunt into Texas Indoor Hardball may from now until Sunday evening preoccupy the attention of folks in these parts, save the odd White Sox fan, which is, of course, the only kind these days.
Nothing much at stake, really. There is the all-time home run number, to be stuck out there like some great shining star, too obvious to be ignored, too majestic to be reached.
What will it be, 66? 68? Will it stay at 65?
And Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are rooting for a tie? Come on. I don’t believe it for a second. Charles Lindbergh didn’t have a co-pilot. The Vatican is not a duplex. There are not two bylines on the Starr report.
We have never had all-time home run co-leaders. It is not American. We need the clarity of a single name at the top. This is not college football.
So one of them is just going to have to step out this weekend and take the spotlight alone. It has been very fanciful, all this Affirmed and Alydar stuff, Ali-Frazier, Lennon-McCartney, comparisons to all the great rivalries and collaborations. One would not be the same without the other.
And in truth probably Sosa and McGwire have needed the other’s stimulus, though if I had to choose who needed the other more, I’d take McGwire, who was wallowing in self-pity and in an extended slump until Sosa woke him and rewoke him.
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Neither is lying under oath when they say kind things about each other. Sosa says McGwire will win the home run title and then goes out and whacks two balls over the wall. McGwire says he wishes Sosa nothing but success, yet every time Sosa catches up, McGwire pulls ahead again.
However they have to play the game is fine with me. But what we want, what we demand is a clear winner.
On Sunday night, Sosa’s arm can be raised in triumph or back patted in condolence, a fortune linked irretrievably with the Cubs, for finishing fifth in a four-team race would cause greater grief than if the Cubs had just been as crummy as everyone assumed they would be.
The other night Terry Mulholland was quoting the Beatles, so he thought. “Strange days, most peculiar, mama,” Mulholland said, mixing up John Lennon with pre-Yoko friends. Well, Mulholland is a left-hander.
Not that the sentiment is wrong. It is just that peculiar is a most inadequate description, mama. Strange, indeed, eh, Brant Brown?
This is beyond surreal. Never in the long and loopy history of the Cubs has so much been riding on so narrow a rail. Sosa’s indelibility, the playoffs, the very definition of Cubbishness. Lovable Losers? Inevitable Chokers? Perpetual Second-raters?
If the Cubs can’t get into the postseason as a wild card, through this most rear of doors, the next thing is to give them their own division.
What will it take, two out of three? A sweep? Will the Mets’ reach exceed their grasp, all the way from Atlanta? Will the Mets, a generation removed, do it again to the Cubs?
The Cubs will be playing three opponents, the Astros–who may or may not care–McGwire and his home run crusade–easier or harder than Sammy’s, depending on who is doing the analyzing–and the Mets, a traditional and perpetual nuisance.
And there is the added conscience crimper of young Kerry Wood, self-diagnosed as ready to pitch. Why would the Cubs not want the best pitcher in the biggest game?
It is all that peculiar Cub stuff, from failures to bad choices to poor trades to broken dreams, all of it over all these years. The decision on Wood is not a medical decision nor a strategic decision. It is a phobic decision, made of fear of the worst rather than anticipation of the best.
Who has nerve enough to chance Wood’s future? Let’s see where the Cubs are on Sunday and how much they need one win. Next Monday, if there should be a playoff? Here’s the ball, Kerry.
Strange days for sure. And so few of them left.