Bob Cook

CHICAGO - Whether manager Lou Piniella cares to believe it, the Chicago Cubs are cursed.

Certainly, a declaration of cursedness is not news to anyone who has watched the Cubs suffer through any of their going-on-100 championship-free years, though Piniella had frequently denied belief in curses with the surety of a Christmas movie villain grumping he doesn't believe in Santa Claus.

Even those most skeptical of the supernatural -- and I count myself in that category -- can't deny the evidence that doling out $400 million in free-agent contracts and hiring a World Series-winning manager was a shockingly insufficient offering for the very hard-to-please baseball gods. A few hours before the game Saturday in which Arizona would sweep his doomed Cubs out of the National League Division Series, Piniella talked about the impossibility of his anemic hitters changing their free-swinging style in the playoffs, where they mustered only six runs in three games. Piniella didn't know it, but he was also describing the impossibility of the Cubs changing their luck.

"The thing basically is, we've played a particular way all summer," Piniella said. "You're not going to be able to change what you're doing in a short period of time."

But something will have to be done quickly, or else the late Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse's crack about how anybody can have a bad century will become literally true.

The Cubs and their fans have seemingly tried everything to break their cursed state, but nothing works. Not skinning a goat and hanging it from the Harry Caray statue at the southeast entrance to Wrigley Field, as happened soon before the Arizona series. Not blowing up the infamous Bartman ball and mixing its remains in pasta sauce at Harry Caray’s Restaurant. Perhaps the baseball gods want nothing that involves a late, pleasantly pickled TV announcer.

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Actually, what the baseball gods want is for the Cubs and their despairing yet hopeful fans to stop trying so hard. Most definitely, a key to Arizona's sweep was staying cool under pressure as the Cubs wilted under it. But as the Boston Red Sox proved in 2004 and the Chicago White Sox proved in 2005, the baseball gods themselves will choose when to end a curse. And they have a dramatic way of letting you know it.

What the Cubs need, and what the Red Sox and White Sox got, were the benefits of the kind of crazy plays that always seemed to go against them, the true sign from the baseball gods that they feel you have suffered enough for trading Babe Ruth or throwing a World Series.

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For the Boston Red Sox, it was "The Steal." The baseball gods allowed little-used Dave Roberts to steal second base in the bottom of the ninth inning, Red Sox down 4-3 to New York in the bottom of the ninth inning in an AL Championship Series they were down 3-0, setting up his game-tying run on Bill Mueller's single. The steal, a gift from the baseball gods, was the spark for Boston to win four straight games and had enough leftover karma to win their first World Series title since 1918.

For the Chicago White Sox, it was -- well, there's no catchy nickname for it yet. The baseball gods allowed A.J. Pierzynski the wherewithal to run to first base after figuring Angels catcher Josh Paul trapped a swinging third strike with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, and allowed home-plate umpire Doug Eddings the lack of wherewithal not to say anything upon Paul's trap (or catch, depending on how you look at the replay), and Paul the lack of wherewithal to roll the ball toward the mound so the glacially slow Pieryznski would be safe at first. Just for a little fun, the baseball gods allowed Pierzynski's pinch-runner to steal second and score the game-winning run. Pierzynski's play was the spark that for Chicago to win four straight games and have enough leftover karma to win their first World Series title since 1919.

For the record, during Arizona's game-clinching 5-1 victory Saturday at Wrigley Field, no Cub stole second base in the ninth inning, nor did any Cub reach first base on a controversial catch/trap at the plate. But those plays are already taken, so they wouldn't have helped.

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Plus, they aren’t strange enough. Whatever sins the Cubs committed to make the baseball gods smite them year after year, the dramatic play has to be something really off-the-wall. It wasn’t enough for the baseball gods that pitcher Kerry Wood hit a home run in the 2003 National League Championship Series Game Seven -- a pitcher hitting a home run! -- that followed the infamous Steve Bartman's reach for a foul ball that might have been caught, precipitating the Cubs' infamous meltdown against Florida at home.