NLDS Game 2: Dodgers 10, Cubs 3

What? You thought this was going to be easy? The Cubs are trying to do the impossible: Win their first World Series in 100 years. Now they just have to do the more literally impossible: Win a best of five series after losing the first two games at home. And that has been done, by the way. Alfonso Soriano has first hand experience doing it as a Yankee in 2001. They lost the first two games at home to the A’s, only to win a nail-biting 1-0 Game 3 in Oakland on Derek Jeter’s amazing relay throw to the plate to get Jeremy Giambi who for some unfathomable reason didn’t slide. Then they went on to win the next two and the series.

Ok, that game really did break the A’s spirit (believe me, I was at that game; it broke everyone’s spirit), and it wasn’t surprising they folded up shop afterwards. And if anything could break the Cubs spirit, those two pathetic attempts at playing baseball the last couple days could certainly do it. But all the Cubs need to do is start playing like the team that won 97 games this year and not like my 2nd grade tee-ball team. I mean, what was that? One error per infielder. Five of the Dodgers 10 runs were unearned.

Take away the Dodgers 5 unearned runs and then take away one more (the only reason all 5 runs in the 2nd inning weren’t unearned is because a scorer can’t assume a double play, but I can) and we only lose last night 4-3. Not only that, but we had the tying and winning runs on base in the 9th. That’s not bad. Take away Dempster’s strange “walk the bases loaded and give up a grand slam” moment from Game 1 and we lose that game 3-2.

Of course you can’t do either of those things, and even if you do, we still lose, but you see my point. If we start playing like we can play, we can win, easily. That’s just a rather big “if”.

More than that though, we can’t just win Game 3. We need to win it in such away that breaks the Dodgers spirit and will to win. We need to crush them. They haven’t crushed us. We’ve crushed ourselves, and we can uncrush ourselves.