The Brew Crew vs The Lou Crew

Every year that passes by another year of pressure is added. I'm talking about the Chicago Cubs. Tonight, Monday, July 28, will mark the start of a four game series at Miller Park. Even though it is only July, the series carries a lot of weight with it. The two have met 6 times so far this year, and the Brewers have taken 4 out of the 6. All 6 games were played at Wrigley, so there is some room for concern in Wrigleyville. The two series were also played in April, so for the most part this is the first time the two teams meet during the heart of the season. I'm looking forward to it, but to be honest I'm not exactly pinning my hopes and dreams on the outcome of this series.

Whether they win or lose the series, (I personally believe it will be a split. It's just too tough to come out with an advantage over a four game set)this will just be another brick to the pressure that is mounting in Wrigley. You can see it now creeping into everybody's faces, and it is starting to scare me. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on this team to win. The players know it, the fans know it, and I think Sweet Lou recognizes it too. At some point the continuous pressure to break the streak, is going to break the team. The 'curse', is self-fulfilling, in that when we get close, we start looking for what is going to go wrong. The team that was playing fun and footloose in April and May is starting to tense up and realize what it is in front of them. Everybody in Chicago is believing in some sense of destiny, or divine right this season, and forgetting that to win you have to play good baseball. The Cubs are just not playing good baseball over the last two weeks, and really since the middle of June.

I don't believe in some cosmic fortune that is going to come down and bless the Cubs, 100 years after they last won it. No, the Red Sox, Angels, Mets, and Brewers are not going to abide by our cosmic fortune, and I'd really like the writers and fans to wisen up to this. Here's the ace in the hole, though. There's one other guy who doesn't believe in any of the curse non-sense either. Lou Pinella. While he definitely recognizes the pressure that is mounting on his ballclub, (and you can literally see it in his face, if the Cubbies didn't come back against the Marlins yesterday he looked like he was about to go on a tirade) he knows how to address it, and get the players to relax.

From all the things I was happy about when Jim Hendry brought in Lou Pinella, that was the one thing I was most excited about. Lou is the kind of manager who will shift the pressure and focus off of the players, and onto him. Instead of looking for a collapse, Lou may offer one of his famous tirades or shouting matches. Those are the kinds of things players need to shift their own focus to what they know, baseball.

I know that nobody knows about soccer, or cares to know about it, but I'm going to use an analogy. When Chelsea brought in Jose Mourinho, he inherited a club that hadn't won the Championship since 1954. They were cursed, hated, and nobody believed they could ever top United or Arsenal. Mourinho came in, annointed himself the Special One, and proclaimed himself the genius of football. His antics, quotes, and style shifted the pressure and focus off of Chelsea and onto him. Chelsea dominated his first season in control, and went on to win their first Championship in exactly 50 years. I think Lou Pinella can do that with the Cubs.

A look at the Cubs' schedule for the next month following this Brewers series looks relatively harmless. Expect something in this Brewers series to get Pinella fired up, and get the Cubbies fired up to close out the season. They are the best team in the National League, and once they get back to playing as such, I think they can run away with this thing. If we can only keep that pressure off.