My4Albany

So much for "The Team of the Century."

Wasn't this supposed to be the year the Chicago Cubs finally ended their World Series drought? You heard all the talk: 1908-2008....it was destiny that the Cubbies would get back to the Fall Classic and win it....especially in light of the great regular-season Lou Pinella's team put together.

Unfortunately...it turns-out that 2008 isn't much different than any of the previous 99. Oh, sure, the Cubs won a lot of games during the Spring and Summer. But when it counted in the fall...they disappeared quicker than that crowd at the neighborhood beach.

And now everyone is trying to figure out why? How could this have happened again? Well, here's the thing: the Cubs fell victim, again, to their own expectations. They were unable to rise to the occasion and over-come the pressure and distractions that come from 100 years of futility.

In other words...THEY CHOKED. "Choke" has always been seen as the untimate insult in sports. And in some ways it is. Because highly trained, and in the case of professional sports, highly paid athletes are not supposed to succumb to pressure. They are supposed to be machines, oblivious to the demands of the media, the fans, history.

But we know that's not the case. When you hear a coach or player say "I don't read the papers or listen to talk radio" you know that guy is the pouring over every word every day, and had a radio in every room.

Is that what happened to the Cubs? A big time choke job? Absolutely. You don't have every member of your infield make a error in the same game and not call that a choke job. But here's what would bother me even more if I were a Cubs fan: this was all pre-destined. You don't have a "priest" bless your dugout in an effort to erase some mythical "hex" before the first game of the playoffs. You don't, and players and coaches, even address the past. If you're the best team in the National League...which the Cubs apparently were, at least according to their regular-season record, then what happened the previous 99 years should be  irrelevant.

But, instead, the Cubs played right into the hands of the jinx, screwing with their own minds in the process, and CHOKED. Plain and Simple.

By the way, the Mets also CHOKED this year, allowing last season's historic collapse to effect the way the finished this year and permitting history to repeat itself. And there will be other teams who we'll see CHOKE this year. It happens. It's a fact of life and sports. The players and team who can keep the past in the past and play in the "now" are the one's who usually get it done in the clutch. One's that are controlled by their negative past normally relive it.