Chicago Cubs Baseball

This is what Chicago Cubs baseball fans have been waiting for.

No, not the second half of the season. But a reason to believe.

Hope has always marched along side of the Chicago Cub faithful. From the first pitch of spring, through the Wrigley Field gates and with the exit of each season, Cubdom has rallied around its team - even when the gesture hasn’t been returned in kind.

The rest of this season isn’t about hope, though. That’s the stuff of Chicago Cub teams past (”I think we can. I think we can.”)

Thinking and knowing is the difference between hoping and believing. Both have their roots in faith, but that’s where the similarity ends.

The Chicago Cubs enter their remaining 69 games tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in the major leagues. It’s the first time in the club’s history that its held that distinction.

No small feat considering the Cubs have played the better part of six weeks without its best hitting outfielder (Alfonso Soriano), went another two-week stretch without the ace of its pitching staff (Carlos Zambrano) and have spent the better part of the first half finding an adequate fifth starter (Rich Hill, Sean Gallagher and Sean Marshall).

All the more reason to find a reason to believe.

“We’re confident, but we’re not arrogant,” second baseman Mark DeRosa said. “Just a bunch of guys having fun.”

And it’s going to take both if the Cubs are to hold off Central Division challengers St. Louis and Milwaukee. While some baseball pundits continue to expect a second-half Cardinal collapse, the Cubs could only be so lucky. St. Louis has the bats to keep the team in contention even with a group of throwaway arms that has taken over-achieving to a new level.

Milwaukee, meanwhile, set the tone for the second half when it acquired C.C. Sabathia last week. As the trade indicates the Brewers are hungry.
But if 99 years without a World Series title doesn’t make a team hungry nothing will.

‘You hope in the end you’re on top,” Piniella said. ”We’ve been rewarded with a first-place finish at the first half, but then it starts again [Friday] in Houston and then Arizona. We have a tough time coming, and teams will enjoy trying to slow us down. We’ll see.”

Yes, time will tell. But there’s no better reason than to believe than what the Cubs have given us thus far.