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No surprises this fall. Date published: 10/17/2004
AUTUMN! Ah, what a great time of year. Beautifully colored leaves, warm days, chilly nights, high school football and ah, yes, October baseball. Like most things in nature, fall is predictable. We may rest assured that the heat and humidity of August will transform itself into the frosty mornings of November and that the green leaves of summer will turn wondrous colors and then fall to the ground. Major League Baseball is just as predictable. No matter what the National League standings look like in July, you can be sure that the Chicago Cubs, like the heat and humidity at Wrigley Field, will have faded by October. You can bet the farm that the Atlanta Braves will capture the Eastern Division pennant but will not win the World Series. It is also almost a certainty that somewhere, somehow, the Curse of the Bambino will sneak up on the Boston Red Sox and bite them in the seat of the pants. And no matter what the baseball "experts" say in April, you can rest assured that the New York Yankees will be in the thick of the fray when October rolls around. As usual, these things have come to pass again this year. The Cubs, who held a comfortable National League wild-card lead as late as mid-August, experienced their usual collapse in September. This year, the Cubbies, who couldn't hit their way out of a wet paper bag down the stretch, couldn't blame their demise on some poor guy in the left-field stands who tried to snag a foul ball. So they blamed it on announcers Chip Caray and Steve Stone, who only called it like it was. Both Stone and Caray, who have been in the WGN and Fox broadcasting booths longer than the furniture there, will be gone next year. Rumor has it that Caray will replace Don Sutton in Atlanta (Sutton may go to the Dodgers), while Stone's future is unknown. It was not broadcasting criticism, but atrocious hitting by the top of the lineup--most notably Sammy Sosa--that sent the Cubs home before the leaves turned. And the pitching staff that experts said was unbeatable? Well, it was beatable.
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