By Paul M. Banks
Hey Chicago, what do you say? When’s the next time the Blackhawks play?
In the city by Lake Michigan, baseball success is so rare that in 1959, when Emperor Daley I set off the air raid sirens to celebrate the White Sox American League Championship, everyone panicked! People thought Soviet missiles were headed for Chicago, instead of realizing a local team just won a pennant. Partially because the former scenario seemed so much more likely than the latter. In retrospect, the siren stunt was a bone-headed thing to do in the midst of Cold War nuclear paranoia, but it did prove a point: failure is expected here.
This past weekend, both the Cubs and Sox thoroughly embarrassed themselves; by losing a series to the two franchises that are little more than a developmental squad for the rest of MLB.
We’ll begin with the Cubs who narrowly avoided being swept at home by the Pittsburgh Pirates, a franchise that last year accumulated a 17-year losing streak — the longest in any of the country’s four major professional sports leagues. The closest Pittsburgh has come to fielding a winning team since the rail thin version of Barry Bonds era was ’97, when they finished second in the NL Central despite having a losing record and a payroll of just $9 million.
And this year?
Quick how many Pirates can you name?
Andy LaRoche? Ryan Doumit? Zach Duke?
Not exactly household names yet Sunday’s loss to the Cubs ended Pittsburgh’s 7 game winning streak over them. After taking two of three in the series, the lowly Pirates are also now a half-game ahead of the Cubs in the NL Central standings.
Moving on to the White Sox, they lost 2/3 at Kansas City, as Gavin Floyd got rocked AGAIN, and saw his ERA balloon some more into the 7s.
And on Friday night, the Sox punchless offense generated one, yes ONE run in 7 innings off Royals starter Gil Meche; who came into that start with an ERA in the 8s and a record of 0-4. The Royals haven’t made the playoffs since 1985, and they haven’t had a winning season since 2003, when they were a very unimpressive 83-79, but lately they’ve been handling the Sox.
Both small market clubs, the Pirates and Royals, have really shown no interest in competing for October these past couple decades. Or at least their actions -maintaining small payrolls, failing to sign free agents of note, and the fact that they let their homegrown stars leave for bigger money elsewhere- convey a lack of interest in competing. So I guess it’s fitting that both teams took out a Chicago club this past weekend. Both the Sox and Cubs are a few games below .500 and look to be headed absolutely nowhere in 2010. But hey, at least the Hawks look good in the Stanley Cup playoffs, right?