Reverse Psychology

This is the Cubs' big chance. This is their Red Sox moment.

The Cubs now face the same galling indignity, and the same disguised opportunity, that Boston grabbed so spectacularly four years ago when it trailed the Yanks three games to none but came back to reverse the curse.

The Cubs aren't just three wins in a row from coming back against the Dodgers to win a division series. If they can pull it off, they are probably three wins from launching a drive to their first world title in 100 years.

You don't reverse a century of baseball misfortune without a miracle. It's not enough to build a team with five fine starters, two lights-out relievers, five 20-homer hitters, three others who hit .300, a fine defense and a deep bench, a 97-win season and a fiery manager with World Series rings.

To reverse hexes, you have to summon yourselves when everyone else has given up on you, as the Red Sox did in '04. You have to read every Chicago sports section after your second hideously played loss to Los Angeles and realize that you've been thrown under the bus, turned into comedy sketch material again and given a place in Cubbie hell next to the '69 chokers, the '84 gaggers and last year's gang that got swept in the first round. As for talk radio and the Internet, who knows what chasms of cynicism and jubilant sadistic jeremiads can be found there?

In Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, the Red Sox were battered to the ground in their own ballpark by the Yankees, 19-8, humiliated by their own ineptness and consigned to the netherworld by every fan they thought had loved them.

They were alone. They had only each other, a band of Idiots. Then they won and won -- eight victories in a row, building each day on their sense of pregnant destiny, until they had swept a superb 105-win Cardinals team in the Series as if St. Louis wasn't even allowed to present a lineup card.

That's where the Cubs are now. They have their best pitcher, Rich Harden (1.77 ERA since arriving in a July trade) on the Dodger Stadium mound in Game 3 against 33-year-old Hiroki Kuroda (9-10 as an MLB rookie). Behind Harden is veteran lefty Ted Lilly (17-9), whose rainbow curves could baffle a young team like the Dodgers. The Dodgers' answer? "To be announced." Nice rotation depth Joe Torre's got there. He could use Greg Maddux, in the bullpen for the opener, for a Game 4. But Mad Dog has seldom loved the postseason.

If the Cubs get back to Chicago for Game 5, they'll not only be anointed, their fans will be begging forgiveness for jumping ship after just two games. What a fainthearted sight, all those "faithful" huddled in their seats on Thursday night, grumbling and muttering, even booing, as all four Cubs infielders made nervous errors on basic plays.

We pause now for a moment of sanity. Will the Cubs actually come from behind to win this series? No, probably not. In history, 23 teams have lost the first two games of a five-game series at home. Only one advanced.

That's why the Cubs will likely face another winter of disgrace; perhaps, all things considered, their bitterest ever because the entire sport has been waiting for their Once a Century Title since spring training.

But that improbability, those long odds, are exactly where the opportunity lies. When your franchise has been told for generations that it has cockeyed karma, Steve Bartman nightmares and all the rest of the Sisyphean mythology, you're going to have to do something truly remarkable and transformative to get all the way through the postseason to a Series win.