Quite a quote from Barrett....

[YearofDaCubs]

I think it is crazy that a full generation of Cubs fans have probably died and never seen the Cubs win a World Series. I agree with Goony, there is no excuse for this organization to be where it is right now. I'm starting to think that 2003 was an anamoly and not meant to be because since then nothing has worked right.

[goonys evil twin]

That's all well in good, but you generalized all of pro baseball. Teams like the Braves, A's, Twins, etc. aren't failures just because they didn't win it all.

 

Generalized all of baseball? I generalized all of pro sports. What I didn't say is that the Twins are failures if they don't win it all this season. I said there is no point in rooting on a professional sports team unless you are rooting for them to win the championship. The A's have shown they are capable of consistently putting themselves in a position to win the series, they've also won like 4 of them in the past quarter century or so. The Braves are always in it, are still in it, and with their front office should be in it for the foreseeable future. The Twins won a couple a decade ago, and routinely give themselves a short in recent years.

 

Bottom line is if you didn't win the world series, you failed that year. It's possible to take positives out of a season that ultimately ends in failure though. I never said it wasn't. 2003 ended in failure for the Cubs, but they were in a position to keep getting closer with smart management. Of course we all know that didn't happen. Oakland failed miserably in the playoffs 4 years in a row, but they were able to take something out of that because they kept putting themselves back in a position to change the result.

 

Pittsburgh on the other hand has been a disgrace since the early 90's. They have nothing positive to take out of their failures. They aren't building. They aren't putting themselves in a position to improve. They are failing and failing miserably, over and over again. If they were a college team you could hang your hat on their graduation rate or something. But that's a pro franchise that has been performing like an amateur organization from top to bottom. The Cubs are somewhere in between, but on the verge of falling back into that abyss if they don't make major changes. They're failures and there's nothing else to say about it.

[Satch80]

I think it's possible to be proud of a pro team that's short on talent yet finished in the running by overachieving, just as it is possible to be proud of a marginal intellect that manages a "C" in a difficult course.

 

But this team? A team that is a bottom dweller on defense, last in hitting with RISP, one of the least focused and fundamentally sound teams I've ever seen. A team that folds under pressure and blames everything but themselves.

Proud of them? Ya gotta be kidding!

[Careless]

I think it is crazy that a full generation of Cubs fans have probably died and never seen the Cubs win a World Series. I agree with Goony, there is no excuse for this organization to be where it is right now. I'm starting to think that 2003 was an anamoly and not meant to be because since then nothing has worked right.

1 1/3 lifetimes. The medians from 2 generations have lived and died since the cubs won

[Larry Horse]

2003 is beginning to look more and more like the 13-3 Bears season a few years ago.

[CarolinaCubFan]

I think it is crazy that a full generation of Cubs fans have probably died and never seen the Cubs win a World Series. I agree with Goony, there is no excuse for this organization to be where it is right now. I'm starting to think that 2003 was an anamoly and not meant to be because since then nothing has worked right.

1 1/3 lifetimes. The medians from 2 generations have lived and died since the cubs won

 

Thanks for the encouragement Careless! Pretty sad when you stop and think about it.

 

Anyway, this team regressed. I'm a baseball fan, I've loved the game from the first time I threw a ball. My favorite MLB team is the Cubs. That is how I view this team. I have loyalty to the Cubs, but we are so outclassed by St. Louis right now it isn't funny. As a baseball fan, this really sucks and it's old. Wasted years for Prior and Zambrano. If Baker is back, I've got better things to do next year.

[biittner77]

I think Barrett meant that the fans are proud of the way that the Cubs have played lately. They've played well even though the games don't really matter. That's more than can be said for a lot of teams this time of the year.

 

High expectations are good but they need to be tempered with realism. Was a championship season really an attainable goal this season? Given the glaring flaws that this team had coming out of ST, the goal should have been make the playoffs and see what happens. When Todd F Hollandsworth is your everyday LF for more than half the season expecting to win the WS is insane.

 

The goal should always be to get better. Winning a championship is the ultimate level of improvement. The Cubs are a failure this season because they didn't get better, they didn't make the playoffs not because they didn't win the WS.