I remember all of this vividly - needless to say somehow, someway, we weren't totally hungover the next day. And I remember it was me being the loudest when we told to be quiet - all because I was venting hard because the Cubs, the damn Cubs, my old NL Central rival, won the World Series and broke the curse. I was venting because it was the season after my Astros arose from their ashes and they took 2016 as a year to take a step back. I was mad because everyone was lavishing praise on the Cubs, who demonically beat a heroic little engine that could in Cleveland in extra innings in Game 7. I was mad because I was envious. My drunk, upset, self would have never imagined that five seasons later, that entire Cubs team would be gone - not after a dynasty but after only once making it to an NLCS after that. The Cubs dynasty that never was reached high, but in its fizzling we have to examine the impact.
Leaving that 2016 World Series, the Cubs seemed like a perfect team, a lineup with a septet of young, brash, brilliant stars. Some of the best pitchers in baseball. A front office led by the brilliant Theo Epstein. A seemingly limited budget as the biggest team in America's 3rd biggest city, that printed money all over its golden old field. All of it seemed inevitable. None of it came to fruition in the end. A few guys already left before this past week, but seeing Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant, three members of the Cubs 2016 infield, traded was just stunning, and even as someone with my slanted opinions of the Cubs' success, sad.
This is not how it was supposed to work, and truly other than just greed by the Ricketts family, there's no reason it should have. The Cubs have all the money, and if they couldn't resign everyone (probably even for the most ambitious ownership groups, retaining all those young stars was going to be tough) you would expect the savings from letting Schwarber and Heyeward and Soler and Russell go would allow them more flexibility to re-sign Bryant or Rizzo or Baez. Instead, they didn't sign the first group (traded a few), and then traded the last group. None of this needs to happen except for pure greed.
It's the greed of owners who sold every part of Wrigley Field, even getting exclusive rights on selling seats on top of buildings across the street. The owners who pocketed umpteen hundreds of millions while the team won a World Series, then donated even more umpteen of millions to various Trump and GOP Super PACs - all to gut their team.
Baseball has a huge money problem. Basically every team but the Dodgers are crying poverty. The league has realized overpaying FAs is not smart, but suddenly teams aren't even willing to pay their own guys before they reach FA - an all in all good investment. Seeing guys like Manny Machado and then Nolan Arenado get dealt either right before big paydays or even right after is depressing - but at least those are Baltimore and Colorado. Honestly those markets and owners can afford it, but the Cubs and AFFORD IT afford it.
I'm also a bit sad because I'm not as happy as seeing the Cubs torn down as I should. I should be contrasting them to my team. Putting aside the cheating for a moment, the Astros tanked more blatantly than any team in MLB history prior to them during the 2011-2013 period. In that time Jim Crane became the owner, and he promised fans that when the Astros got good, he would invest anda pay. And he has. They don't have the highest payroll, and its fair to say they've been stingy in signing FAs (more an organizational philosophy), but they shelled out big for Altuve and Bregman to keep them around. They traded prospects for high-priced pitchers like Verlander, Cole and Greinke, and re-signed two of them (admittedly, to short term deals). It's fair to criticize them letting George Springer go, and they will almost assuredly be letting Carlos Correa go - but they used the Springer money elsewhere, and again locked up Bregman and Altuve.
Those things matter. Yes, the 2017 World Series is a bit tarnished - but most Astros fans don't care about that. They care about how in 2017 they had the best infield in baseball - Bregman, Altuve, Correa, Gurriel. Four years later, those four are all still there and the Astros have the best record at the moment in the AL and may end up with a fifth straight ALCS trip. The Astros kept some of the core together, they invested in the memories of their glory. The Cubs certainly didn't.
And in the end the Cubs may end up better. The Astros have a poor farm system at this point, and may be in a much worse place than the Cubs will be come 2024. But in 2016 and 2017 two young proto-dynasties won the World Series. Again putting aside the cheating stuff, Astros fans can feel a lot better of how that winning core, how that run, was both treated and turned out. And for that I'm both grateful, but also sad the smiling Bryant throwing out a runner to the smiling Anthony Rizzo was just a one-time moment celebrated by me in a blood-bomb infused fever pitch, something that didn't grace the baseball field nearly as much as it should have.
