Burnside Predicts the MLB Playoffs

Though Baseball’s second season has already begun, you can find the BWC playoff predictions at the bottom of this column. Unfortunately, they do little more than expose our stupidity, as all picks were submitted before the games this week. Enjoy - ed.

My default thoughts are about baseball. For example, if I’m in a conversation with somebody and they start droning on, my brain goes to an elaborate baseball fantasy with myself at the center. Baseball thoughts aren’t brought on solely by boring talkers, they happen to me all the time, kind of like the way a screensaver comes on if you’re away from the computer too long.

Like the other day. I had to run a few errands on my lunch break and as I was strolling through the neighborhood, I suddenly found myself pitching for the Chattanooga Lookouts (I’m pitching for a minor league team because I like my fantasies to have potential). Top of the ninth, Lookouts up 3-0, I’m on the mound and I have a perfect game going. I’m facing the last three batters and I get the first two out - one on a ground out to second, the other on a pop out in foul territory. I’m impressing everybody because I’m still working a 99 mile-an-hour fastball. That’s fast for any minor league pitcher, but 99 through the ninth in the minors is basically unheard of. It’s pretty unheard of in the majors, for that matter, so I’m certain I’m going to get called up as soon as the game ends.

I get the guy to swing on one down the middle and I can feel the wind from his whiff out on the mound. I try to get him to swing again, so I drop a sinker out of the zone, but he doesn’t bite. One and one. I shake off the change up, nod to the fastball, kick and deliver and he pops a foul over the backstop. I can tell this guy really wants to be the hero. He’s got that mean eye he keeps trying to give me. Good. I’m looking forward to making him just another minor league has-been who tells his grandkids he played pro ball once. On the next pitch, just to let him know I’m crazy, I show him the knuckle ball. Nobody knows where it’s going, not even me, and it hits the mitt high and tight. Makes him sweat a little, so he steps out and takes a couple half-hearted practice cuts. I know I’ve got him now. He steps back in and his third base coach is going, ‘Come on, Mickey,’ and I know by the way he says it at least he knows Mickey’s a lost cause. I decide to get it over with. I decide this last pitch is the last pitch of the ballgame. I grind the ball in the pocket of my glove. I take a little too long staring in for the sign, just long enough to let him to feel the polyester of his pants sticking to the backs of his knees. Then I let it rip. A hundred miles an hour on the inside corner. He’s handcuffed. Can’t even swing. The ump punches him out and the whole place goes nuts.

I wake up a few steps away from my building. Ballgame over. It’s time to be a case manager again. I sigh, open the door and climb the steps to my office.

My wife knows I love baseball. She also realizes something I don’t quite realize yet, namely, that I am never going to be a professional baseball player. So, she helps me indulge my baseball fantasies when she can. The other day I had a rough day and she bought me baseball cards to cheer me up. Baseball cards! There’s a little mom and pop grocery store near her work that sells baseball cards and she bought me two packs of ‘90 Topps (when I was a kid and collected cards like mad, Topps was my brand) and a whole box of ‘91 Score. This was great on a number of levels. First, the ‘90 Topps packs still had the gum in them. Yes, sports fans, I opened the pack and I chewed the seventeen year old gum…well, ‘chewed’ is a strong word. It turned to liquidy-pink goo the second it hit my tongue, but it still tasted the way I remembered: generic bubble gum flavor with strong hints of cardboard. The actual best part, though? Those packs contained a Gary Sheffield rookie card and a second-year Randy Johnson. In a related realization, our kids are going to Harvard.

And yet, as much as I love baseball, I didn’t follow it much last summer. My attention was taken by two things…first, the World Cup (I also love soccer) and second, my wedding to the wonderful, baseball card-buying woman I just mentioned. However, this baseball season, happily married and with the realization that soccer in the US has been relegated to the Beck-Glam and Spice Wife circus, I gladly re-focused my attention on America’s great pastime.

It’s been extra-exciting this season because my teams, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs, are having great years. One might ask the question, ‘Why in the world would you root for those two particular teams? You must either hate yourself or love to have your heart broken.’ Neither really. Simply put, I grew up near Cleveland and now I live in Chicago. I guess I could have been a White Sox fan, but then, how could I possibly have kept my integrity as an Indians fan? Anyway, as I write this the Cubs are leading the NL Central, a game up on the Brewers as the Cardinals have finally entered a tailspin, and the Tribe is up by five and a half in the AL Central.

I’m going to whisper this next sentence because I’m afraid if I shout it the baseball demons will hear and put a hex on the possibility forever…This year, I think it could be the Cubs and the Indians in the World Series. Talk about fantasy baseball. My skull would probably shatter if that actually happened. Listen, I don’t lightly throw a prediction like that out there, as if hope was cheaper than a Devil Rays bleacher ticket. It ain’t easy being fans of these guys. In Cleveland and up on the North Side of Chicago, coffee in September is served with cream, sugar and heartbreak.

I’ve loved the Cubs since I moved to Chicago five years ago, adopting them as my new hometown team. While it’s true they had one great season back then (2003), they’ve also had the stinkers for which they are famous. Not to mention the seasons upon seasons before that which tightly affixed the label ‘Lovable Losers’ to them. There was the great potential that just couldn’t seem to get fulfilled…I’m talking about you, Mark Prior and, yes, you too, Kerry Wood. I know you’re pitching again, but it ain’t quite the same. I mean, you’re middle relief now, Kerry. Middle relief. Then, there’s the greats who’ve had their time with the Cubs recently and didn’t stick around…Nomar Garciaparra, Greg Maddux…Maddux, you’re that kid who goes to college out of state, moves back in with his parents then suddenly moves out to the West Coast for some trashy girlfriend. Ah, what the heck, we still love ya though. Who got you started anyway, Hall of Famer? You’ll always have a place.

And the Indians. I’ve loved these guys since I was born way up in Canton, Ohio thirty years ago. Man…all the lifelong Cubbie fans who’ve had it tough all these years…come be a Tribe fan. The heartbreak you feel at Wrigley will seem like that spring time crush you had your freshman year in college compared to the heartbreak you feel at the Jake. I remember when I was a kid, just about the time school got out for the summer, the Indians would always be at the pinnacle of their season having risen to the top of their division right about then. Every afternoon I pulled the newspaper out of the front door before anybody else got to it so I could checked the standings. As the summer wore on, I would watch the Tribe slowly slip and slip until about the time school started again at the end of August, when they would be buried at fourth or fifth place with no hope of a postseason. This summertime bell-curve began to seem inevitable for the Indians and I remember in 1990, even trying to become a Cincinnati Reds fan, just to see what being a fan of a championship team felt like. I justified my infidelity, saying to myself, ‘At least it’s still an Ohio team.’ So close, yet so far.

And then came 1995. We made it to the Series. Wow. That felt great. They didn’t get the job done, so what? That’s as close as they came since the Truman administration. So, they took a break for a season and tried again in 1997. And they lost it all. Again. To the Marlins. They lost the World Series to the friggin’ Marlins. Well, if there’s kinship between Cubs fans and Indians fans, that’s what it’d be based on. Cubs fans know what it’s like to lose to the Marlins. …Yes, yes we do. I was here for Bartman. It really sucked.

So, here’s why it should have worked for the Cubs: This is the first year in awhile where Cubs pitching has finally worked as a coherent unit. At the start of the season, Carlos Zambrano was pegged as the Cubs’ ace. This seemed about right in a post-Wood, post-Prior rotation. Thing was, Z didn’t look like an ace right away, but the good news was, the Cubs discovered their starting rotation had some real depth, if not the names everybody knew. Jason Marquis, Rich Hill and Ted Lilly quickly took responsibility for good pitching, performing dependably early on and actually getting some wins. Zambrano got his legs under him and has demonstrated more and more that he can make his volatile emotions work for him (though, as he’s proved recently, they can still be his undoing).

Back in the days of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, you cheered when they were on the hill, but your stomach dropped when then-manager Dusty Baker would call for relief in Kyle Farnsworth or Antonio Alfonseca. Dusty might as well have set up a batting tee. This season, that’s changed and I give credit mainly to good decision making on manager Lou Pinella’s part. Where Dusty would give Alfonseca chance after chance in the closer slot…and Alfonseca would blow all those chances…Lou hasn’t been afraid to bring variety. Bob Howry was hot for awhile, with his methodical, stoic pitching style, but when he lost the handle a couple times, Lou didn’t hesitate to give it to Ryan Dempster and even the new kid Carlos Marmol, who, by the way, has mountains of potential. Hang on to him. At any rate, this formula of complimentary play and healthy variation in both the starting rotation and amongst the relievers isn’t getting stale any time soon. That’s the beauty of it, really. It can last forever.

Now, it seems like every off season the Cubs try to sign a big name player who would automatically guarantee a postseason. It happened this year, or so I thought, when they brought in Alfonso Soriano. I gave a half-hearted, ‘Yeah!’ with the rest of the Cubs fans, but thought to myself, ‘Here we go again. This guy’s gonna come in, underwhelm us all and, after a year or two, head out.’ I must say, Soriano has proved me wrong. He played his heart out and has really provided leadership on the team, especially in the way of hitting. When he wound up on the DL a few weeks ago, there was a noticeable hole in the lead-off slot. However, as with Cubs pitching, hitting isn’t a one-trick pony this year either. You can’t get to the World Series off the lumber of just one guy, after all. The power of Aramis Ramirez, which goes back a few seasons, has been augmented by the…dare I use the word…scrappy hitting of guys like Ryan Theriot, Mark DeRosa, Mike Fontenot and Jacque Jones. The past few seasons, when either slugging or striking out was the status quo for Cubs’ bats, singles and doubles from these guys on a pretty much regular basis has taken the offense in a totally new and totally welcome direction. We’ve finally figured out how to play some small ball, in other words. And, as of late and as if in response to an impending extended season, slugging has come back in vogue on the North Side. Cliff Floyd and Daryle Ward have really powered up on opposing pitchers lately, which is a fantastic attachment to already consistent bats in the line-up. On a slightly different note and kind of just because I like to take a swipe at Sammy Sosa every now and again, slugging has gotten a bad reputation at Wrigley Field over the last few years. It’s nice to see guys like Floyd and Ward touch ‘em all and have a seat on the bench, instead of feeling the need to give a “trademark hop” and recite what I guess to be a Shakespearean soliloquy in sign language for the nearest TV camera.

Now for the Indians: The Tribe came up with a knockout baseball potion this year from two main ingredients: talented team players and painful memories. Grady Sizemore, everybody says it, is a born baseball player. Remember Nike’s big promotion last year for the World Cup? Joga Bonito and all the commercials with Ronaldinho doing all kinds of magic with a soccer ball? Well, Grady Sizemore - Joga Baseballnito. And it doesn’t start and stop with him. The talent is definitely deep. Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, C.C. Sabathia. Unlike the Cubs, the Indians have a proven ace in Sabathia, a pitcher who has paid his dues and earned the title as he’s grown with the team. Another nice thing about the Indian’s lineup that will spell success in the postseason: While there’s undeniable talent, the talent is without the ego of, say, a Sosa, or a Bonds, or the entire Yankees line-up including management and front office personnel. When each member of the Tribe hustles his arse off to win a game it’s hustling for the whole Tribe, not for any individual squaw, if you know what I mean. It worked for the White Sox in ‘05 and if I can say anything nice about the Sox (gag reflex rising) then I must really believe it’s true.

Last but not least, let’s keep this in mind about the Indians: ‘07 is the tenth anniversary of their last World Series appearance, the one they dropped to the Marlins. I repeat myself here, not be redundant but to re-emphasize that losing the World Series is painful no matter what, but losing to the Marlins is salt in the wound. To any Indians player, given the drought of baseball championships in Cleveland, 1997 is like yesterday. I bet you could still find one of Jim Thome’s hiked-up stirrups hanging somewhere in the home locker room at Jacobs Field (props to Thome for reaching the 500 homer mark). Nobody in Cleveland has forgotten what being in the World Series felt like. This year, the talent on the Tribe will be able to use the memories of ‘97 as fuel for a Pennant race and a World Series bid.

So, this is what it’s going to come to, as far as I predict; a World Series of heartbreakers and losers. But maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly why I thought the Cubs and the Tribe were going to come together in October. Maybe heartbreaking and losing has finally gotten to both of them and they’re ready to shed those labels for good. Ha. Well, obviously one team would still have to wear those labels after all is said and done, but wouldn’t the ultimate baseball fantasy be if both the Cubs and the Indians played so well that they were declared World Series Co-Champions? I suppose that’s a question I could only ask of myself. At least, I’d be the only person to answer ‘yes’ to it.

Playoff Picks:

David Azuma
NLCS: Rockies over Cubs
ALCS: Red Sox over Yankees
World Series: Red Sox

Bryan Allain
NLCS: D-Backs over Phillies
ALCS: Red Sox over Yankees
World Series: Red Sox

Paul Luikart
NLCS: Cubs over Rockies
ALCS: Indians over Red Sox
World Series: Cubs

Chad Gibbs
NLCS: Cubs over Rockies
ALCS: Boston over New York
World Series: Red Sox

Jon Adams
NLCS: D-Backs over Phillies
ALCS: Yankees over Red Sox
World Series: Yankees

Kylah
NLCS: Rockies over D-Backs
ALCS: Red Sox over Yankees
World Series: Red Sox

Calvin Ko
NLCS: D-Backs over Rockies
ALCS: Yankees over Red Sox
World Series: Yankees