With the Mets in apparent collapse and almost out of the playoffs, the National League, quite honestly, isn’t going to be of much interest to me this playoff season.
Except for the fact that the Chicago Cubs clinched the NL Central last night:
It was just last September about this time, if you’ll remember, that the Cubs were putting the finishing touches on a 96-loss stinker, a waste of a season in which the North Siders finished dead last in the National League Central. It was a forgettable season all around, from Dusty Baker’s lame duck managerial reign to Derrek Lee’s lame wrist to the continuing saga of a couple of lame pitchers, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. It was, in many ways, a lowpoint for a franchise that wrote the definition of the term.
And now look at the Cubs. It’s astonishing, isn’t it, what a little $300 million makeover can do?
The Cubs clinched the Central division title on Friday night with a convincing 6-0 win over the Reds (and, in Milwaukee, an accommodating loss by the Brewers, 6-3 to San Diego), thus becoming the first NL team in a last-weekend free-for-all to snag a spot in the postseason.
Go Cubs ! At least until the World Series.
