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Dave
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Post subject: Dodgers sweep Cubs
 Posted: Oct 05, 2008 - 06:03 PM CST
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Joined: Apr 18, 2005
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It’s got to be the curses.
Not goats and black cats.
Just curses. Four-letter curses. Four-letter baseball.
That’s what this 100-year anniversary postseason looked like for the Cubs — from all those walks in Game 1, to all those errors in Game 2, to all those zeroes Saturday night in Game 3, until it was too late in a 3-1 elimination loss at Dodger Stadium.
They won’t admit that the drought or the so-called curse or anything else extraneous got in their heads or in their way of playing the game.
‘‘I don’t think it has anything to do with the 100-year thing,’’ manager Lou Piniella said after the game. ‘‘I think it has to do with the fact that this team in postseason doesn’t generate enough offense to win games.’’ But there’s no denying that these World Series-favored Cubs didn’t even get down to actually competing head-on in talent-vs.-talent baseball until sometime after the first inning Saturday night.
And by then it was too late.
The butterfly walks and anxious errors in the first two games put them in a hole they had little chance to escape. By the time it struck midnight back home, their magic season was a three-and-out pumpkin.
"We just didn't hit, you have to score runs," Piniella said. "We had opportunities and you have to take advantage of them. This is six games I've managed now in the postseason and we have scored just 12 runs. That doesn't get it done."
Alfonso Soriano was one of the culprits in the offensive drought.
"We have the best team in the league, and we struggle in the playoffs," Soriano said. "We did not play good, like a team. That's the reason we didn't win."
This upside-down postseason wasn’t about any extraterrestrial or divine power of curses. But the power of suggestion — the self-fulfilling prophesy of constant questions and constant peripheral attention on the subject all season — placed an enormous burden on the postseason shoulders of this team.
Which is no excuse for failing to take care of business. Especially when Piniella specifically went in search of his team’s ‘‘cajones’’ Thursday night, only to be left still searching late Saturday.
But the organization was party to the psychological burdens, if not distractions, of this whole goat-history thing, through such things as welcoming a camera crew to occasionally, since spring training, have access to film happenings and conduct interviews in anticipation of a special, deep-October season.
One team employee left the team magazine’s staff to shadow the club in order to write a book on a potential World Series championship.
And as recently as Wednesday, team CEO Crane Kenney enlisted a Greek Orthodox priest to sprinkle holy water on the dugout roof and threshold in a clearly attention-getting stunt to reverse the curse.
When asked after Game 3 about all the distractions, Piniella said, ‘‘Maybe if we get in this position next year, we should do like a football team — take the team to a hotel, get away from all of it as a team.
‘‘I say that half-joking, but it’s food for thought.’’
By the time the Cubs had self-destructed in a second straight game Thursday night, the only thing that looked to salvage the ugly two-game start to this series was getting out of town.
But starter Rich Harden, the electric-stuff pitcher who was acquired to elevate the Cubs from a playoff team to a World Series favorite, opened his first Cubs playoff start by giving up more hits and runs in the first inning — three and two — than he usually does in a game.
And that was it. The Cubs didn’t score until the eighth inning. They left men in scoring position five times, including the fourth after a leadoff double by Geovany Soto. They finished their season trailing after 22 of their final 23 innings.
It was the Cubs’ postseason Achilles heel of the Piniella era that continued to plague the team against Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda — who threw a four-hit shutout against the Cubs the last time they faced him.
This time, he pitched into the seventh inning and wound up with 6„ more innings of shutout pitching against them.
‘‘I don’t know what it is,’’ said Piniella, whose team has scored just 12 runs in six postseason games — all losses over the past two seasons. ‘‘I don’t know if it’s trying too hard. I don’t know if it’s trying to do too much. I don’t know if it’s the opponents’ pitching. I don’t know if it’s the scouting on our players. I don’t know if we get cold at the wrong time.’’
By the time the Dodgers got to Harden again in the fifth for another run, the Cubs looked buried.
Their only run came in the eighth on Derrek Lee’s leadoff double and Daryle Ward’s two-out, pinch single. ‘‘I’m going to tell these kids when they come up to hit that all we’ve got to do is win three in a row,’’ Piniella said before the game. ‘‘Outside of that, what can I say? The organization tried the Greek priest. I don’t know what the hell else [to do].’’
He was laughing then, along with everybody else in the room.
But it doesn’t seem so funny this morning.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/1203351,ea ... 08.article |
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