The History Boys

Forget the Billy Goats and Black Cats: It's a Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood for Dempster and the Cubbies

CHICAGO A young man in a black polo and cargo shorts pushes through a small crowd of people waiting for rides home outside Wrigley Field's employee exit and steps into the cool sunshine of a glorious late afternoon, hanging a left on Waveland Avenue. It is late September, the Cubbies are on the verge of clinching the division, and Wrigleyville is swollen with pennant fever. It spills out of the bars at the corner of Waveland and Clark, rising into a constant, piercing din. And then suddenly the fever breaks. Calm prevails. The young man walks on.

As Ryan Dempster crosses Clark, his steps interrupted only once by a group of fans who have recognized him as the Cubs' winningest pitcher and who do nothing more fanatical than shout encouragement, Wrigleyville, the teeming collection of beer joints and souvenir shops outside the old stadium, gives way to Wrigleyville, the yuppie enclave of towering brownstones and shady trees. This is Dempster's neighborhood. This is baseball's American dream.

Dempster, 31, is nearly halfway through the four-block walk from his office to his home, and there is no getting around the notion that, at this very moment, it is quite possible no one in the entire universe has it better than he.

"My office is Wrigley Field," he says, as if in disbelief. "I walk to work. I pitch for the Cubs. We're going to the playoffs."

There is nothing quite like the North Side of Chicago in a pennant race, with all those day games in the crisp autumn sunshine, the way God intended, and the stately old stadium in the middle of a stately old neighborhood, with fans filling every seat in both the stadium itself and the surrounding rooftops, and with Ron Santo up in the radio booth, living and dying on every pitch.

"I walked in here for the first time in 1960. I was 20 years old," says Santo, a nine-time all-star third baseman and now the Cubs' radio analyst on WGN-AM. "I was walking in with Ernie Banks, and it felt like I was walking on air. The electricity, the atmosphere. I tell you, there's nothing like it.

"Yankee Stadium may be gone now, but they can never get rid of Wrigley."

This is the Cubs' third National League Central title in the past six years, a run of fortune that hasn't occurred for this beleaguered franchise in nearly a century, but there is also a sense that this team is unlike the ones that came up short in 2003 and 2007. With 95 wins entering Tuesday, these Cubs have a good shot at becoming the franchise's winningest team since the 1945 NL champs won 98 games. That was also the last year the Cubs made it to the World Series.

And with any luck at all -- luck, in absentia, being one common thread tying together the last 100 years of Cubs history -- this will be the team that finally does it, that brings a World Series title to the North Side for the first time since 1908, that puts to rest, once and for all, all the silly talk of curses and billy goats and black cats. Steve Bartman, front and center. Your redemption is nigh.

"It's Gonna Happen!" say the signs in the windows of the bars and restaurants.

It was Dempster who said back in February, "I think we're going to win the World Series" -- a statement that was met with gasps and shudders from many Cubs fans, conditioned as they are to never, ever tempt fate. He also said, "Enough of the 'curse' this, 'curse' that, the 'goat' this, the 'black cat' that, the 100 years, whatever it is."

And if the Cubs eventually make good on his prediction, Dempster himself is likely to have much to do with it. After a three-year stint as the Cubs' closer, a change brought about by an arm injury that robbed him of his durability, Dempster, an all-star eight years ago at age 23, returned to the starting rotation this year and has been the Cubs' most consistent starter. A victory Sunday -- one day after the Cubs clinched the division -- left him with a 17-6 record and a 2.99 ERA, numbers that will garner him some Cy Young Award votes.