Checking in. Health is improving, praise God. Perhaps in some ways this hiatus may become shorter than expected. New job, lots of new learning, which I believe will indeed lead to big things down the road. But for now, I still need to sleep a lot. I'm following advice from two trusted sources to take six months off from school (yes, even though I was only taking one class at a time, June of this year excepted). I will resume my studies, eventually. I'm still planning on seeing not only this particular degree through, but also the longer-term path that my sweetheart and I have charted together since early in our relationship.
But that's not why I'm here writing today. I'm writing because of yesterday. No, my personal life is good and predictable right now, which the way I'm finding I like it. I mean yesterday in terms of the sports world. Mostly, you have seen me write about basketball, a sport in which I became a fan due to growing up when Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and co. were bringing championship titles home each year (almost). But today I'm primarily going to write about baseball. Specifically, the Chicago Cubs.
Specifically, yesterday was about saying goodbye to this:
...and saying hello to new beginnings. Yesterday, and in days leading up to this, the Cubs traded away the last of the main players* from the 2016 championship team. A team that at one point looked like it could have become the beginnings of a dynasty, but, well, in the years since didn't.
[*I put an asterisk because the team still has from the 2016 team Jason Heyward and Kyle Hendricks, and Jake Arrieta returned to the team this year after spending a few seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies in the interim.]
I digress, though. In sum, this week, the Cubs traded away Anthony Rizzo (New York Yankees), Javier Baez (New York Mets), Kris Bryant (San Francisco Giants), and Craig Kimbrel (Chicago White Sox), among many others. While Kimbrel wasn't on the 2016 team, he was someone that would've been an excellent piece, if the Cubs were contenders now. Which they are not. They're in fourth place. And all four will be free agents at the end of this season.
The team hung on to their core for years after the championship, but frustrating trends began to take hold that led to first gradually dismantling the organization, such as manager Joe Maddon's contract not being renewed, and even team president Theo Epstein walking away. Players like Jon Lester and Kyle Schwarber, also 2016 title cornerstones, were let go when their contracts expired at the end of last year. Interestingly, both signed with the Washington Nationals, and even more interestingly, both were also traded this week, to the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox, respectively.
I'm all in support of it. For the Cubs to push toward winning again sometime in the future, this needed to happen. In fact, I prayed for precisely this. And my prayer got answered.
I'll be honest, though: I felt pain, too, reading as each new trade materialized. Unlike previous generations (and there were many), these were the guys that brought the Cubs that very-long-awaited championship that I and so many others groaned, pined, wept for. These guys did it. And they're now gone. We don't know if they'll ever come back to the team down the line.
The fact is, it's really hard to win a championship in sports, baseball especially. Baseball hasn't had a repeat champion since the 2000 Yankees, and they haven't even had a team win more than one in a very short span since the 2014 Giants (who won in 2010 and 2012 as well). Every year since 2015 baseball has had a completely different champion. Teams that won that also looked like they could win again (just like the Cubs) haven't been able to get back to the mountaintop. Now, that could change with the Los Angeles Dodgers this year. That team is a monster, and this season isn't over yet. But we'll see.
The other thing too is the fact that the Cubs underperformed from 2017 to this year. At one point, one of the star players admitted that they themselves got lax after the title. It was apparent in 2017, but we all thought, ok, fine, it's hard to repeat as champions. We get it. But surely, they'll be back the next year. One key component that made the team so good -- discipline -- disappeared and never returned. The guys are all still so talented. But, they underachieved. Hence the clearing house.
I support the trades. I prayed for it. The Cubs needed a reboot, and amazingly, it wasn't until this year that it finally became obvious that it was needed. I saw it all the way back in 2018, when the team lost in the wild-card game. But it still hurts, because these guys weren't only so good, but they were great human beings, too. Like it or not, anyone in the public eye is a role model, and that includes athletes. These guys were folks that nameless, faceless fans could look to and admire and root for. A certain weird kind of connection gets built, and it got built, over the course of 6, 7, 9 years or so, depending on how long each team member was here in Chicago. There's history here.
I wish each guy that got traded the best. They each still have at least half their careers ahead of them, ready to make new memories and do all they can to establish their own baseball legacies. But we'll have our memories to cherish as the Cubs reboot.
Even with the pain of the goodbyes, and in a sense the suddenness of it, this week (and particularly yesterday) was also about new beginnings, with new prospects and new players, and a new foundation. A "formative moment for the Chicago Cubs," one ESPN sports analyst put it.
To close, an apropos passage:
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Amen, indeed. And so it goes.
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