Winning the World Series created the new curse. I read it here on the board often. “Hey, we’re winning, stop complaining.” “We won a World Series, relax.” “ In the playoffs, 4 straight years.” “This is so much better than the past 100 years.”
I don’t really disagree with any of those view points, but whenever I saw truly real Cub fans like Ben and Ron and others post those thoughts, I respected their love for the Cubbies, but I still cringed. To me, that just sounded like “Wait til next year” in a different form and tenor. In his first two years, Joe had the guys loose, relaxed and having fun. His style made them forget about the pressure of winning, and it’s what the kids needed.
Joe’s biggest error was in 2017. Remember? The team got off to a bad start, and Joe publicly stated that he didn’t want to put a lot of “we have to repeat” pressure on the team, and even though the team rallied to finish fairly strong, it fell short.
Rizzo says that Joe was like a Dad to them. I believe him. Unfortunately they all became his sons, people that he hated to be critical of. We all loved them; we being the fans and the front office. We tried to keep Fowler, just couldn’t. We tried to keep Arrieta, but couldn’t justify the salary. And when we needed to trade some people to juggle the team, we couldn’t. We loved these guys.
Since I live in Cardinal country, I saw their team operate differently. David Freese was their hometown World Series hero, but in the next couple years when he didn’t produce, he was traded. Last year they traded several popular youngsters for Goldschmidt. There is a paradox with the fandom here. They are very faithful to their players, but they’re okay with almost any trade. Except, of course, with the addition of Fowler. They still hate him.
I think Theocracy was trying to build a team that would dominate for years, but just struggled to make some moves because of an allegiance to the guys who ended the “curse.” Totally understand that. But Branch Rickey probably wouldn’t. He would have traded his mother if it meant a championship.
Anyhow, Joe is gone. Great manager. I think some of our heroes will be dispersed this winter. Time will tell if we are rebuilding or reloading. Hope it’s the latter.