Last Sunday I walked to the Cubs’ last home game of the year, taking my usual route: down Lincoln, across Grace, a slight jog down Janssen to Waveland, and then across to the ballpark, trying to keep Wrigley Field itself out of view until the last possible moment. Above, the clouds had that low, gray, heavy, dirty look typical of autumn, but they were spread out enough to avoid being threatening, and the temperature was comfortable. Up until the instant the light standards loomed above Bernie’s on Clark Street it was just a pleasant walk through the neighborhood of baseball, past women jogging, fathers walking their children, and squirrels foraging for nuts in the first fall leaves. The church bells at Saint Ben’s had been ringing as I left the house, and there was an air of ritual to the occasion: the Cubs’ last home game of the season and the last home game of Ryne Sandberg’s career. When I arrived at the ballpark, stepping around the corner of Bernie’s to be confronted with Wrigley Field in all its bustling glory, I discovered that other fans–about 29,922, in fact–felt exactly the way I did. On this afternoon we wouldn’t have been anywhere else.
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The final day’s attendance brought the Cubs’ season total to 2,190,308. That’s an amazing figure for a team that lost 14 straight games to open the season, that was battling the Philadelphia Phillies on this afternoon for bragging rights to the worst record in the league, and that is no closer to its first pennant since 1945 or its first championship since 1908 than it has been for most of those years in between. Like the White Sox, the Cubs made some recent moves that improved them for the future (they were, however, out of contention at the time, a distinction worth noting), trading Mel Rojas, Turk Wendell, and Brian McRae to the New York Mets for pitcher Mark Clark, outfielder Lance Johnson, and infielder Manny Alexander. This corrected two of the major off-season mistakes of last season: signing McRae and free-agent bull pen ace Rojas to long-term contracts, when the Cubs–in the midst of their annual rebuilding program–would have been better off going with youth. The Cubs now have Terry Adams installed as their closer, and it appears they’ll be making regular space for Doug Glanville in the outfield. What’s more, Kevin Orie is putting the final touches on a decent rookie year, and the starting staff has improved its look of late, with Clark and the recuperated Kevin Tapani joining Jeremi Gonzalez–an 11-game winner in his rookie year–and 10-game winner Kevin Foster to form a solid rotation.
If it’s true, as they say, that young pitchers will break your heart, then Wood is coming to the right place, the place where heartbreak is the normal state of affairs. Me, I think someday soon he’ll be one of the best pitchers in the league. Then again, I look at Orie and see a player remarkably like Sandberg as a rookie–cautious, watchful, fundamentally sound–and who may well develop the same power Sandberg did once he learns to pull the ball. Their rookie stats are very similar, with Sandberg hitting seven home runs with 54 RBI and a .271 batting average in 1982–hardly a debut foretelling a trip to Cooperstown. From great hope comes great heartache but, on rare occasions, great satisfaction; that’s the essence of being a Cubs fan.
