Don't Freak Out, But...

In the universe’s fun fashion of tricks and turns, I need the Chicago Cubs. I need the team that sits 3.5 games out of first place in a tight division. I need the team that is two games under .500, handed the White Sox the weekend series, and now has to watch Mark DeRosa suit up as a Cardinal.

I need the underachievers to overachieve for once.

Graduating from college and suffering through unemployment proved to be an inevitable fate, as did a mid-season swoon. The fact that they coincided is about as entertaining as watching a colonoscopy in HD. But as fun as this mid-season colonoscopy is, I need it.

Oh, the trying times of a young American man. Cue Nebraska-era Springsteen.

The only predictability in my life comes in the form of a dysfunctional baseball team. Fittingly, this team is predictably unsettling. There's the question marks surrounding Aramis Ramirez's return, Carlos Zambrano routinely resembling a Michael Bay action sequence, Milton Bradley's descent into "Worst Signings of 2009," Kevin Gregg's entrance into a witness protection agency by the All-Star Break, Rich Harden's disappearance (which unsurprisingly coincided with the NHL Playoffs and seems to have come with a Playoff hangover), The Curious Case of Lou Piniella, and finally the offensive power outage, courtesy of everyone not named Derrek Lee. And that's just scratching the surface. Now we have to deal with DeRosa as a Cardinal.

Cue Charlie Brown's Christmas theme.

Alfonso Soriano hasn't homered since June 7 and is hitting a paltry .235. Lee leads the team with an unastoundding 39 RBI. Reigning ROY Geovany Soto may be turning the corner, but he's only hitting .223 with 7 home runs. That doesn't even begin to cover situational or timely hitting, categories the mashers aren't contributing to in a positive fashion either.

But before you break out grandpa's cough medicine or buy into Ozzie Guillen's clamor, consider this: on June 2, 2007, the Cubs lost their sixth game in a row and sat nine games under .500. The Cubs rebounded the next day with a 10-1 win over Atlanta, but the most memorable moment from that series came the game before when Lou serenaded the umpiring crew with one of his infamous tirades. The move seemingly took the pressure off of the Cubs and acted as a catalyst for the rest of the season. What the catalyst will be in 2009, or if one actually exists, remains uncertain. The point is, despite what happened with the White Sox, this season is far from over.

Welcome to life as a naive Cubs fan. But that's part of the game. It boils down to a combination of numbers and an outrageous amount of faith. Sometimes that's all it takes, an outrageous amount of faith, even when odds that seemingly favor Dusty Baker are stacked against you. Hope, faith, and Old Style.

Mankind has gotten by on worse.