Cubs ascension makes Cubs-Cards no longer “rivalry in name only”

SHARE Cubs ascension makes Cubs-Cards no longer “rivalry in name only”
screen_shot_2016_04_19_at_10_25_22_pm.png

Miguel Montero tags out Matt Holliday trying to score the tying run Tuesday night in the fourth. Ex-Cardinal Jason Heyward threw him out from right field.

ST. LOUIS – Cubs veteran David Ross calls it “noise” on the outside that doesn’t affect the guys in the clubhouse.

But the changes to the Cubs-Cardinals dynamic these days are as palpable as the bruises inflicted during the fight between a guy in a red shirt and a guy in a blue shirt behind the Cubs’ dugout at Busch Stadium during Monday night’s game.

“I just laughed,” said Ross. “You can definitely see the fans are a little more riled up. I think Cubs fans have got something to cheer about finally. Nothing wrong with that.”

As the Cubs and Cardinals engaged in another starting pitchers duel Tuesday night, it became more clear with every Jaime Garcia pitch, Yadier Molina triple and Jason Hammel two-run single that the Cubs’ ascension over the last 12 months has changed the tone of this century-old rivalry.

Never mind the ascension the last two nights. The Cubs are looking for a series sweep Wednesday after beating the Cards 2-1 on Tuesday night behind six sharp innings of pitching — and that two-out hit in the fourth — by Hammel.

A year ago, a young Cubs team that hadn’t finished higher than fifth place since 2009, lost six of seven games at Busch Stadium in May and June to a veteran Cardinals team accustomed to annual trips to the National League Championship Series.

Then the Cubs finished strong, beat the Cardinals in the playoffs, earned their own trip to the NLCS and signed away two of the Cardinals’ top players from 2015: Jason Heyward and John Lackey.

Lackey beat the Cardinals Monday. Tuesday, Heyward threw out Matt Holliday at the plate to end the fourth inning, with the Cubs leading by a run.

And the 2016 brawl is on between the guys in the red shirts and the ones in the blue, after 90 years of a rivalry that mostly involved the Cubs chasing the Cardinals, with occasional flashes of first-place bragging rights that flickered out in October.

“It’s the best thing for a rivalry when it’s a real rivalry, with two really good teams going at it,” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said. “For the most part this has been a rivalry in name only and hopefully we can get it to a place where it’s very consistent every single year, and that it’s two very good teams.”

Name only?

While the Dodgers and Giants, and the Yankees and Red Sox have built long, storied histories of battling for division titles and pennants, the Cubs and Cardinals have finished 1-2 only four times in the last century (1930, ’35, ’45 and 2009).

When Hoyer and Cubs president Theo Epstein were in Boston, the expanded playoffs took the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry to an epic level – helped by the Red Sox improving enough to bust their own Curse of the Bambino.

“I look back on it, and I think Yankees fans will probably say this has been the best 10 or 15 years of the rivalry,” Hoyer said. “They got the Red Sox in ’03; we got them in ’04. The Red Sox won the World Series in ’07. They win one in ’09.

“I think that’s a great thing for a rivalry. And hopefully we can get to that point here, where both teams are really good, both teams have their years, but every single year you’re going into the season, you probably know one team’s going to win 11 games and one team’s going to win 10.

“Every year with the Yankees it seemed that way.”


The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”