During spring training and throughout the year we’ve read and listened to very smart people tell baseball fans why this season was going to be a storybook year for the Chicago Cubs.
After all, it has been 100 years since the Cubs last won a World Series. The year was 1908, the same year Henry Ford produced the first Model T automobile and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were allegedly killed in Bolivia. The St. Louis Cardinals wouldn’t win their first World Series for another 18 years.
Some writers claim the Cubs are the best team in the anemic National League. They may be right. But unfortunately for the countless Cubs fans around the world, like so many years before, the storybook year so far goes to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Dave Duncan is hands down the best pitching coach in the National League. Year in and year out, Duncan gets any number of average pitchers to throw strikes, and to compete.
And then there’s La Russa – everybody wants to hate on him, but he just doesn’t stop. Both coaches have outcoached most baseball teams this year with what amounts to an average or below average team coached by any other combination.
Gerry Fraley reports today that the Cardinals have used…
A total of 74 lineups. Pitchers batting eighth. Relievers in the rotation. Nine starting infielders. Eight starting pitchers. Seven starting outfielders.
Still, it’s the Cardinals with the second best record in the National League and are only 2 and half games behind the heralded Cubs for first place.
On July 4, the Cubs visit the Cardinals for a three-game stand. It’s going to be a storied mid-season series. Update:The Cubs won two out of three and now lead by three and half games.
Who knows, maybe the Cubs will have a storybook year. And for all we know maybe Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did live to be old men. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
