August 1, 2021
The End of the Era
...or saying goodbye to World Series heroes
When Javier Baez cranked a three-run homerun in the first inning on July 23, 2021, it was Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo crossing the plate ahead of him. The three Cubs embraced as the Wrigley crowd cheered, louder than the Cubs’ sub-.500 record, and general organizational angst, should otherwise have dictated.
But this was more than the traditional over-zealousness of the Friendly Confines; it was a final chance to cheer, undisturbed by the questions circling over the carcass of the championship window, for the Cubs core that flung open that window in the late summer of 2015. The dawning of that championship era brought with it a level of unbridled optimism extreme even for Cubs fans. Leave it to a fanbase with a 108-year-long World Series drought to proclaim that one title was a given, but two or three was to be expected. If you give a mouse a cookie.
The promise of what that era of Cubs baseball was going to bring was fulfilled on a rainy November night in Cleveland in the fall of 2016. Billy goats and black cats were finally butchered, drowned in the 17-minute rain delay of Game 7.
That was to be the pinnacle of the era. What was broadcast as the opening dynastic salvo turned out to be the grand finale. The next two years were frustrating, though win totals respectably sat at 92 and 95. The run closed with a World Series title, three straight NLCS appearances, two division titles, and two wild card berths, all of this in a sport whose playoffs are routinely described as a crapshoot. Fanbases would kill for that sort of success. A Chicago Cubs fanbase ought to have been ready to murder entire villages.
The cracks were there long before if you were looking. The Cubs grinded into the NLCS in 2017, overcoming the Washington Nationals in an elimination game that was somehow crazier than Game 7 of the World Series, only to get predictably massacred by the Los Angeles Dodgers. But it was the 95-win team in 2018 that saw a wave of red flags emerge. As the offense sputtered into oblivion, the Milwaukee Brewers absconded with the division, and the Cubs were dispatched by the Colorado Rockies in the wildcard game. A lowly win down three-games-to-none against the Dodgers in 2017 ended up being this core's final playoff success.
The magic ran out, as it always does. Pieces were sent off to plug holes in the weary ship, often sacrificing the next ship in the process, struggling helplessly as the team cratered in 2019, won a division in the bastardized 2020 season before being swept by the Miami Marlins. An aged, wounded fighter remained, a skeletal reminder of what once was. And we cheered, as we always do, knowing deep down that the wounds suffered were fatal.
The moment of reckoning arrived at the 2021 trade deadline, where the core was blown to smithereens --Rizzo to the Yankees, Baez to the Mets, Bryant to the Giants. The window had been closed for a while, but now Cubs fans could finally walk away from it.
The Baez homerun was the "Scouring of the Shire" at the back end of The Return of the King -- an unnecessary extension of a story already appropriately told, but one that provides an opportunity to stick around just a little bit longer, to stay in the world that we were so happy in. As Baez's wild batstroke swooped down into the zone and destroyed that pitch into the left field bleachers, the era flashed. The 13th-inning Mothers' Day walk-off, the Game 1 solo shot off Johnny Cueto in the NLDS. Disparate moments from the era, for a moment, echoed just a little bit louder.
As Wrigley rose in unison to watch the ball sail into the ocean of blue in the bleachers, they were watching the era leave with it. And like every Cubs homerun ball at Wrigley Field, it never came back, the memento granted only to the fortunate souls who happened to be in the right place at the right time.