High hopes come justified for streaking Cubs

The Chicago Cubs have the largest lead of any first-place team, 13 games over the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central.

The Cubs have baseball’s best record at 72-41. And the Cubs, with their 4-3, 11-inning victory over the Cardinals Thursday night, have won 10 in a row. All aspects considered, the Cubs can fairly be categorized as soaring.

So it is only for the purposes of historical perspective that we note that on Aug. 12, 1969, 47 years ago, the Cubs had a nine-game lead over both the Cardinals and the New York Mets.

“If you use those numbers,” a Cubs fan friend of mine helpfully suggested, “it will not be objective reporting. It will be sadism.”

I plead not guilty by reason of wariness. We all know what happened in the last seven weeks of the 1969 season. The Cubs went 19-27. The Mets went 38-12. The Mets finished eight games ahead of the Cubs, completing a remarkable 17-game swing and crushing the fondest hopes of Cubs fans.

This is part of the heavy historical baggage that the Cubs have been carrying around since their last World Series championship in 1908. But we have all seen how things are considerably different now.

This …

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