Cubbies Aren’t Losers at Least Not Around Here
They’re back, and San Diego loves them.
You know, the Cubbies. You will recall that they visited one weekend last fall on the way to Detroit.
I assume that they have since changed travel agents, since the one they had last year failed to secure the booking they had in mind. Or maybe he just did them a favor. Why would anyone want to go to Detroit in October--or any other month?
I submit that the Cubbies themselves should be quite pleased to be back in America’s Finest City. It should be a haven of sorts for them.
After all, San Diego is not where the Cubbies lost--at least not in the minds of San Diegans. They perceive that this is where the Padres made a gallant and glorious comeback to win their first National League championship. The Cubbies just happened to be the guys in the other dugout.
The Cubbies might be tempted to consider San Diego to be their Waterloo, Little Big Horn, Appomattox or Watergate, but they should forget such notions.
What the Cubbies have to understand is that 99.9% of the United States considers them to be Lovable Losers. They fulfilled the fears of their followers last fall when they stumbled and bumbled and came up short of the National League championship.
“Aha,” said the populace from Waikiki to Nova Scotia and Key West to the Aleutian Islands, “the Cubbies have done it again. They’ve blown it again. They had it won, and then they lost it.”
Throughout the winter, the Cubbies had to be haunted by forgettable memories thrown in their faces. The marvels of satellite communications had brought them into America’s living rooms, and they had collectively crashed on those very same sofas.
However, in San Diego, the Cubbies will hear no such commentary on their misfortune.
One little sliver of the U.S. populace believes that the National League Championship Series was won, rather than lost. That little island of humanity is bordered on the north by a marine base, on the east by mountains and deserts, on the south by Mexico and on the west by an ocean.
That little patch of land is where fellows such as Leon Durham, Jim Frey, Rick Sutcliffe, Ryne Sandberg and Lee Smith might someday retire in tranquility.
When Leon Durham is old and gray and sitting in a Mission Valley saloon, his cronies will lament the fate which caused him to be in the path of that tricky ground ball by Tim Flannery.
“Every first baseman in the history of baseball has let a ball like that get through his legs,” they will assure him. “You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t worry about what they say at the Cubby Bear Lounge. We love you here.”
When Ryne Sandberg is comfortably ensconced in a trailer park in El Cajon, he won’t have to apologize for letting Tony Gwynn’s line drive carom past him into right-center field for a double.
“Listen, Ryne,” his elderly neighbor will explain, “back in those days, an atomic bomb would have bounced on that infield. So what if they won’t forget it at the Ultimate Sports Bar? We love you here.”
When Jim Frey is sitting on his balcony in Coronado, he won’t be allowed any misgivings about letting Sutcliffe pitch just a bit too long in Game 5.
“After all,” a chum will say, “the man was 17-1 for you. He got you where you were. It shouldn’t bother you that they’re still grumbling in Murphy’s Bleachers. We love you here.”
When Sutcliffe himself leans back against a beach chair in Encinitas, no one will fault him for losing the one game he wanted to win more than all of the others.
“In any other ballpark on any other day,” a sunbather will tell him, “you win that game 3-1 or maybe even 3-0. You just ran into bad luck on a bad day. We don’t care that the firefighters behind the left field wall at Wrigley still talk about the one you lost rather than the ones you won. We love you here.”
When Lee Smith, the mammoth relief pitcher, wanders into a restaurant in La Jolla, folks may be surprised to learn that he threw The Pitch to Steve Garvey in Game 4.
“ You threw that pitch?” he will be asked by the waiter. “It’s funny. Around here, no one has ever paid much attention to who threw the pitch. It probably wasn’t like that back in Chicago, huh? We love you here.”
It all has to do with geographical perspective and allegiance. The local heroes win or the local heroes lose. Unfortunately for the Cubs, they were local heroes everywhere but San Diego. Thus, they lost everywhere but San Diego.
In the frustrating folklore of the Cubbies, Leon Durham and Ryne Sandberg and Jim Frey and Rick Sutcliffe and Lee Smith will be cruelly remembered for what they did or didn’t do on that fateful weekend.
It is different here.
The Pitch is not The Pitch. It is The Home Run. More specifically, it is The Garvey Home Run.
Garvey himself called it a moment frozen in time. In San Diego, it was--and is.
That moment was 8:40 p.m. on Oct. 6, 1984. The series ended at 4:08 the next afternoon, and the Padres had won. It was time to celebrate as San Diego had never before celebrated.
And it was left for the Cubbies to go home to wherever their homes may have been. They left with nothing to celebrate, and little they cared to remember.
For the first time since that October weekend, the Cubs are back in San Diego. They might take some time to look around while they are here because this would be a perfect place for them to someday settle. After all, they are losers everywhere but where they lost.
