Chicago Cubs Baseball

Bring on the billy goats, black cats, Bartmans or any other innocuous superstition. Chicago Cubs baseball has done something in its storied history for only the 15th time in the last 105 major league seasons - reach post-season play.

It was neither pretty nor predictable for the Chicago Cubs despite spring training expectations and an off-season spending spree that probably had New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner blinking. But here the Cubs are, entering Wednesday’s division playoffs with the same record as Arizona, their first-round opponent, and any of the other National League teams that decide to join the party - 0-0.

Starting dead-even in the playoffs means anything can happen - and usually does. See the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals as an example.

All the playoffs prove - at any level - is whichever team can keep their feet in the fire the longest is the hottest.

It’s a system designed as much to reward lucky breaks and unlikely heroes as it is to doom bad bounces and tanking superstars. Which is precisely why Chicago Cubs baseball has as much chance at the dance as the next fella.

What the major league playoffs don’t take into account are curses and legends or anything else that goes bump in the night - unless it’s a baseball leaving Wrigley Field or any other major league park. The major league playoffs are an equal opportunity eliminator. It’s as simple as that.

In the upcoming days the national media will focus on the Chicago Cubs 99 years of franchise futility and all the aforementioned ghosties and ghastlies. But the real danger doesn’t lie in the path of a black cat or in the naying of a goat, the minefield rests in the Arizona desert, filled with Diamondbacks.

Or past that, in any one of a number of major league ballparks.

The Cubs have already flirted with choke. See the Florida Marlins series. And Chicago baseball has already faced its worst enemy - themselves. The good news is the Cubs have made it this far despite all of it.

The Chicago Cubs are for real. The Central Division title flag flowing above Wrigley Field is confirmation. Whether the Cubs succumb to the figments of runaway imaginations or whether they enter the contests against the D’Backs with the conviction of the champions that they are, rests solely on the shoulders of the playoff roster.

It would nice to see that Carlos Zambrano isn’t just a $92 million pitcher, but Nostradamus as well.