Below The Beltway

Once again, the Chicago Cubs came up short in their efforts to reverse 100 years of baseball history:

LOS ANGELES — It was so logical, a week ago, to cast the Chicago Cubs as the favorite in their division series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Looking back, it seems preposterous, as if one season of 97 victories could trump a century of gloom.

The Dodgers, after two decades of searching, found their way back to the National League Championship Series with a 3-1 victory in Game 3 to complete a sweep. The Cubs held to form, falling apart in October and making it 100 years since they last won the World Series.

Joe Torre, essentially dumped as the Yankees’ manager for failing to escape the first round in his last three seasons in New York, has done it in his debut here. Lou Piniella, the manager of the Cubs, watched his team score just six runs and lose all three games for the second successive October.

“Give the Dodgers credit, but let me tell you this: you could play postseason between now and another 100 years, and if you score six runs in a three-game series, it’s going to be another 100 years before we win here,” Piniella said. “So we’ve got to score more runs. That’s it. Period.”

Piniella tried avoiding the monster in the middle of the Dodgers’ order, Manny Ramírez, ordering two intentional walks in Game 3. But Ramírez hit .500 for the series and singled in the Dodgers’ two-run first inning. Hiroki Kuroda made the lead stand, taking a shutout into the seventh.

For the Dodgers, it was their first victory in a postseason series since 1988, when Orel Hershiser struck out Oakland’s Tony Phillips and looked to the heavens, a world champion. The intervening years brought four forgettable first-round losses and a postseason record of 1-12.

These Dodgers, with just 84 victories in the regular season, were not given much of a chance. But they will play in the N.L.C.S., which starts Thursday, against the winner of the Philadelphia-Milwaukee division series

And in that series, the Brewers won last night to stay alive for at least one more game:

MILWAUKEE — The good folks in this sports-mad town will be confronted with quite a predicament at about noon local time on Sunday. What to watch on television: Green Bay football or playoff baseball?

Sundays in October here have long been dedicated to all things Packers, but the rejuvenated Brewers will be competing for the region’s attention after avoiding postseason elimination with a 4-1 victory over the Phillies in Game 3 of their National League division series. If the boisterous atmosphere inside a closed-roofed Miller Park on Saturday was any indication, another rabid capacity crowd will be back here for only the Brewers’ second home playoff game in 26 years.

Like that 1982 team, this bunch is trying to rebound from a two-games-to-none deficit to win its first-round series. Not that anyone remembered.

“I think I was like 8 years old eating Froot Loops and watching ‘The Wonder Twins’ or something like that,” said Mike Cameron, who reached base in four of five plate appearances and scored twice.

Being oblivious to past and present has been sort of the Brewers’ mantra over the last three weeks. This was, oh by the way, just another must-win game for a team that has played one seemingly every day, Bill Hall said.

Congratulations to Joe Torre and the Dodgers.