Bob and Len's Cubs Blog--Hold the Len

There are things you don't forget.
IN late September, A.D. 1984, the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball team won the National League's Eastern Division, or 'East.'
This was a good ten years before they had a 'Central' Division.
Anyway, the two major Chicago newspapers of the 1980s weighed in the morning after the victory.
One of them ran the headline, "At Last."
The other announced, "Cubs Win."
Perhaps most memorably, either WGN-TV, or WGN-AM Radio 720, or both, played a recording of Barry Manilow singing, "Looks like we made it!"
"We" are Cubs fans.
We had waited nearly four decades for the Cubs to get a look at post-season baseball.
Post-season baseball is another way to say "Playoffs."
Playoffs!
So, after two victories over the San Diego padres in early October of '84, the CUbs appeared to have, AGAIN, a World Series date with the Detroit Tigers.
Unfortunately, San Diego won the next three games.
No pennant for Chicago.
No World Series.
Now, i could go on and on about how unfair it was to force Chicago to "cede" home-field advantage to San Diego, or how demoralizing Garry Templeton's bizarre "pre-victory dance" was, or how WRONG it was that, a mere year later, the National League Championship Series went from a Best-of-FIVE-games series, to a Best-of-SEVEN-games series.
Never mind.
I'm writing about the high-falutin' media.
Remember "Cubs Win!" and "At last!"?
Well, the morning after the Padres beat teh Cubs, here were the headlines:
"Cubs Lose," and "Paradise Lost."
How many baseball fans were familiar with the writing of John Milton in the mid-1980s?
How many baseball fans are familiar with the writing of John Milton NOW?
It's like Roy Hobbs says: "Only homer I know has four bases."
It's a quarter of a century later. I'm waiting on an explanation for the 2008 "victory celebration."
And I"m still waiting on the Cubs.