CHICAGO — In sports, we're used to losses prompting overly emotional and one-word reactions. Not so for the Chicago Cubs under manager Joe Maddon.
Sure, a baseball season is 162 games, but the sport still has its share of teams that allow a loss to linger. Maddon said he has been part of teams like that, so his objective when he joined Chicago in October 2014 was to keep emotions on an even keel.
The Cubs limped to the All-Star break this season, losing nine of 11, but they recently won 11 straight games and 13 of 15 overall.
"One of my main objectives with any ...
This season, there’s a euphoria that has consumed Chicago Cubs fans unlike anything the city’s North Side has seen for, say, a little over 100 years.
The lovable losers finally have their World Series contender. Heck, let’s just come right out and say it: This team is the favorite to win it all. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a summer-long party raging at Wrigley Field. The team hasn’t won anything yet except a whole bunch of regular-season games. But can you blame its fans for enjoying the ride?
As lifelong Cubs fans party like it’s 1908, one of the team's newcomers has to ...
CHICAGO — Even when John Lackey is bad, he is good.
That's not to say the Chicago Cubs' starting pitcher is never off his game. But nearly every time the 37-year-old takes the mound, he is good enough to win regardless of the quality of his pitching repertoire.
If that sounds too cryptic, think of it this way: When Lackey doesn't have his best stuff, he is still able to keep the Cubs in a game. Lackey is some version of baseball's Rumpelstiltskin. He can turn the most ominous-looking starts into gold.
His two-year, $32 million contract is looking like a bargain, and ...
When Chicago Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber tore his ACL and LCL on April 7 after colliding in the outfield with Dexter Fowler, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if a few fans reached for a defibrillator.
Hysteria consumed parts of a tortured Cubdom on social media, with some fans panicked that the promising Cubs’ 2016 season was trashed. But that was just an overly emotional reaction.
Chicago quickly plugged the hole in its lineup, has remained one of baseball’s upper-echelon offenses and looks just as likely to end its 108-year World Series drought as it did prior to the Schwarber injury.
Disclaimer: Of ...
Call the Dexter Fowler re-signing a fantasy-turned-reality for the Chicago Cubs, because any hope that the team could entice Fowler to come back for the 2016 season didn’t seem possible a short while ago.
When the Cubs signed outfielder Jason Heyward to an eight-year, $184 million contract in December, it essentially took the team out of the Fowler sweepstakes.
He was seeking a lucrative, multiyear deal in a crowded class of 2016 free-agent outfielders. It didn’t appear that the Cubs could meet his demands.
Then nothing happened.
Free agency moved slowly, and the second-tier outfielders like Fowler saw that their value wasn’t as high as ...
If there’s a pitfall to success, it’s that sustaining it bears a financial burden. In baseball, almost universally, the teams that are most successful boast underpaid players that exceed the expectations of their contracts.
Cubs ace Jake Arrieta, among Major League Baseball's most underpaid pitchers, epitomizes that paradigm. The right-handed Arrieta carried the Cubs through much of the second half of the season and ended his 2015 campaign with a major league-best 22 wins and a 1.77 ERA.
The Cubs will eventually sign Arrieta to a lucrative, long-term deal. But when?
Both sides would benefit from doing so right now.
The Theo Epstein era in ...
The 2015 Cubs season was an appetizer of sorts. It didn’t necessarily represent accomplishment but rather possibilities for a young core that will remain in Chicago for several more years.
No one walks into any restaurant because of its tasty appetizers. But certainly they can excite you about what else the chef has to offer. If anything, they increase your appetite. They leave you wanting more.
The Cubs want more, as they are hardly satisfied with a National League Championship appearance that ended in a sweep by the New York Mets. They want a World Series and appear close toward the goal ...
CHICAGO — A 17-year-old Kyle Schwarber stood straight across from the man-child who would eventually end his football career. Schwarber, who was recruited by a slew of Division I football programs, made the fruitful decision to pursue baseball. Still, it was Schwarber’s intent to end his football career of his own accord—presumably at the Ohio state high school football championships.
That would not happen.
Schwarber, a senior middle linebacker for Middletown High School, was a gifted prep athlete. He was all-state in football and baseball. Had he grown more than six feet, Schwarber, now 22, might be a redshirt senior at a ...
CHICAGO — Every traditional sports rivalry has similar components—geography, divisional ties and decades of history. The Cubs-Cardinals rivalry can be similarly characterized but with one very unique attribute attached: envy.
Since Joe Torre left the Yankees, the Cardinals, inarguably, have been baseball's hallmark franchise. The Cubs? They want to be, well, the Cardinals. As blasphemous as that may sound in Cubdom, the ideals of the Theo Epstein era—scouting, top-flight drafting and prospect development—mirror those that have made St. Louis so successful.
No rebuild was to be complete until Chicago bested baseball's kingpin. So when the Cubs won Game 4 of their National League Division ...
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