The Impossible Dream: Red Sox-Cubs World Series

When Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record in 1995, following the most devastating strike baseball had ever seen, many people said he saved the game. That is probably true. This season, with Mark McGwire breaking Roger Maris' single-season home run record in such astounding fashion, people are saying that he has brought the joy and excitement back to the game, and made it America's pastime again. This may also be true. The Yankees' phenomenal, perhaps also record-breaking, season seems ground for many to concede them the World Series, something many have done since July. They may wholly deserve it, too, but in this season there is one more ridiculous, beautiful possibility of almost religious significance that necessitates the Yankees lose. That possibility is a Cubs-Red Sox World Series.

There have been players and teams and seasons and games and streaks that defy reason and stand out as just one more level beyond great. The 1927 Yankees, of course, and Joe DiMaggio's 56 games and Hack Wilson's 190 RBIs (which even McGwire cannot dream of) and the pitchers of 1968, with Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA and Denny McLain's 31 wins, and Ty Cobb-just Ty Cobb, all come to the front of one's mind immediately. The list goes on ad infinitum. But there would be a whole new level of excitement, of hope, of glee, of miraculousness should the two most famously inept, luckless and frustrated clubs with the best, most loyal fans in the history of the game meet in the 1998 edition of the Fall Classic.

Beyond the obvious fact that a Boston-Chicago Series would necessitate one of the two oldest World Series dry streaks to be broken, the Bosox and Cubbies would change history. So much of baseball lore and 20th century American popular culture is based on the pathetic Cubs, whose fans nonetheless fill Wrigley Field every day and always say "Wait 'till next year," and the tragic Red Sox, who likewise fill grand old Fenway and who have more heroes and goats than even the Greeks could hope for. Eighty-some-odd years of striving and hoping and praying on one of the sides could be swept away in one perfect October week.

In perhaps the oddest twist of all, there would be no hope for either club were it not for the new-fangled wild card slot; the Bosox have been hopelessly behind the Bronx Bombers in the AL East from basically the word go, and the Cubs lag far behind the Astros in the NL Central. So perhaps the Bud Selig-led owners aren't the most despicable, selfish group of money-grubbers the world has ever seen. And perhaps they are. But maybe, just maybe, in their striving for more and more TV revenues and (in some eyes) debasement of the game through expansion and additional playoffs, they have inadvertently created the exact right conditions for a modern-day miracle.

There are, of course, many stumbling blocks to this golden hope. While the Red Sox have all but locked up the AL wild-card spot, the Cubs are neck and neck with the New York Mets, tied at 81-65 as of Wednesday, despite Sammy Sosa's phenomenal season-long slugging contest with McGwire and the improbable actions of rookie fireballer Kerry Wood. Even if they make the playoffs, as the wild-card team the numbers would suggest that, on paper at least, they were the weakest team. The Red Sox' record, though, would put them at the top of any other AL division, save the East; however, they were 20 1/2 games back of the Yankees after losing to New York Wednesday, a game which locked up the East for the Yankees.

The Central-leading Indians have been fading of late, though there is little chance of their not making the playoffs, while the Texas Rangers continue to nip at the leading Anaheim Angels' heels in the West.

So a Cubs-Red Sox World Series is not a sure thing, by any means; miracles seldom are. One thing is sure, though. Just as every true fan of the game has been rooting along McGwire and Sosa in their chase for immortality, every true fan should now turn their hopes and dreams to the possibility of the what would be perhaps the most glorious shining moments in the history of the game, those moments just after the final out when either Cubs or Red Sox fans could say, finally, "We won!"