By Thomas Boswell
Saturday, October 4, 2008

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.

So, why not do it to the Dodgers, whose 84-78 record would have gotten them fifth place in the American League East and was only 15th best in baseball? Why not throw a couple of collars around Manny Ramírez, who had two homers in Chicago, and drape another garland of October misery around the neck of nice Joe Torre, who will always symbolize the anti-Cubs -- his champion Yankees.

How perfect. Beat Manny and Joe, emblems of the most glamorous teams of recent times. That flips the script.

Luckily, the Cubs have one of the few managers who intuits such things: racetrack-loving Lou Piniella. Forget the debate about whether he hooked Carlos Zambrano too early in Game 1 of last season's first-round defeat. Overlook the way, with weeks to plan, he messed up by starting Ryan Dempster (seven walks in Game 1) and stuck with powerless, overpaid (but popular) Kosuke Fukudome, who is hitless in eight postseason at-bats and will be benched for Game 3.

Please note this about Sweet Lou. After the loss on Thursday, he ate pizza throughout his news conference. Munch, grunt, mmmm-good, what was that second-guessing question again? Piniella claims his team has Cub Swagger. If you're 65, have a gut and are growing goat's horns, at least you can show your guys what a defiant bad attitude looks like by eating pizza in the electric chair.

Give the Dodgers some due. Their offense is much improved since Ramírez arrived. Los Angeles also has a fleet of fine youngsters: Game 2 winner Chad Billingsley, prototype catcher Russell Martin, Andre Ethier (.305) and James Loney (90 RBI). But they're not nearly as good, and far less experienced, than the Cubs. L.A. is on a run and needs to finish it fast.

Will the Dodgers close out the best Cubs team of my lifetime, deflate this entire postseason, erase the chance of a Cubs-Red Sox, a Cubs-White Sox or even a Cubs-Rays matchup in the World Series? Yes, probably.

But the Cubs need to remember that their task -- three sudden-death wins in a row in October -- has been done by teams far less talented. Once momentum changes dugouts, it tends to stay there for days. The Cubs don't have to match the four-in-a-row the Red Sox pulled off. That was the best series in baseball history. The Cubs just have to muster the best playoff series in their history.

Now the Cubs need to sacrifice a goat, slap a few pundits and wake their fans, who at this moment stand at the edge of the cliff, pondering the familiar view.

If the North Siders want to win the Series this year, not just reach one for the first time since '45, then lose with dignity to the better league, they need something special. They need a magic cloak, a powerful mojo, an event of their own creation that makes them feel calm, invincible and chosen. They need to beat, beat, beat on the Dodgers.