Baffoe: 7 Previous Games, 1969 Mean Nothing For Cubs-Mets
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) 1969 doesn't mean a damn thing. Seven games played months ago don't mean a damn thing.
With all due respect to Laurence Holmes's column from Wednesday, there's a bit of recent Chicago Cubs history that matters not. They went 7-0 in the regular season against the New York Mets, now their opponent in the National League Championship Series.
Forget that. Do that Men in Black brain erasure thing or self-concuss if need be. Nothing about going undefeated against the Mets for seven games lends itself to the seven-game series that commences Saturday.
The Chicago Tribune's editorial board (which is a cowardly pseudonym for one person who doesn't want to attach his/her name to such a bad article) puzzlingly wrote this week:
So root, root, root for a Cubs-Mets matchup — and not just because, on paper at least, the Mets would be easier to beat. The Cubs are 7-0 against the Mets this year and 3-4 against the Dodgers.
That 7-0 doesn't mean the Cubs own the Mets. Nobody owns anyone in baseball. Nobody owns anything at all, as the Cubs and Mets showed in 1969.
That was the year a black cat showed up in Shea Stadium during a crucial Mets-Cubs series in September, strolling past the late Cubs third baseman Ron Santo in the on-deck circle before disappearing under the stands.
Every pandering piece possible about Cubs-Mets is packed right there in those three lazy paragraphs, thrown against a wall by this town's paper of record to be pawed at by Baby Boomers who progressive baseball thought has passed by. And about that "on paper … easier to beat" thing — what part of what paper? The Sudoku?
(The Cubs and Mets') first series was played from May 11 to 14 at Wrigley Field, the second from June 30 to July 2 at Citi Field. In other words, both fell during the time that David Wright and Travis d'Arnaud were on the disabled list and before the late-July arrivals in Queens of Michael Conforto and Yoenis Cespedes. The presence of those four players gives the Mets a much more potent lineup.
What's more, two of those seven games were started for New York by Jonathon Niese, who has been moved to the bullpen during the postseason. Niese actually acquitted himself adequately, allowing five earned runs in 13 1/3 innings, though he also allowed two unearned runs and walked five against seven strikeouts.
These are no longer the #LOLMets any more than there has been the need to bury the #CUBES hashtag this year (tear, skypoint). New York's lineup can rake, particularly now with Cespedes, who — while the past doesn't matter — a Cubs fan can't help but look at and be revisited by some 2008 Manny Ramirez post-traumatic stress.
After acquiring the outfielder from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline, the Mets went from averaging the fewest runs per game in the NL to the most in his two months with them. In that limited time, Cespedes hit the third-most homers (17) of all Mets for the entire season. Ramirez hit that many in two months for the Dodgers after they got him from the Red Sox before he helped sweep the Cubs right out of those 2008 playoffs.
And these incarnations of both teams have zero connection to the storied Mets championship and Cubs collapse of 1969. But you're going to be inundated with that narrative.
The TV production pieces are already being put together.
"Did you know that the Cubs were in first place for 155 days that year? And still finished eight games out of first place? Did you know that? Did you? Here's a montage with sad piano to tell you about it. Wait, don't change the chan-"
Poor Billy Williams is already being requested for interviews to rip off what should be long-healed scabs. That aunt or uncle of yours who never shuts up about that season is in absolute masochistic heaven right now. Let's set the over/under on Ron Santo and the black cat showings/mentions on TBS between now and series' end at 528.
Such is your significant other's awful friend that you have to invite to the otherwise fun party you're throwing and just hope that the good time drowns out whatever terrible conversation he's driving.
The fun attendees at that party are the 2015 Cubs players, the guys with the home runs gorgings and curtain calls and bearded mound dominance and clubhouse disco balls and #WeAreGood hashtags.
None of these youngsters existed in 1969 or give a flying foul ball about the sad, twisted Stockholm syndrome so many subscribe to with the Cubs mile markers of futility. Ditto their philosophical-yet-level guru manager, Joe Maddon, who would be more likely to note the logical fallacy of invoking seven regular-season games or a season in which baseball was a different animal than it is today than to say he cares if you were a Cubs fan 46 years ago.
It's a new season starting Saturday, independent of lore and luck prior. The Cubs aren't battling history or continuing a recent streak. Rid your mind of any of the garbage some are attempting to force into this vacuum.
All that matters now is each Cubs-Mets October 2015 game itself. And it's about to be quite the damn thing.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
