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Baseball is the girlfriend that lets you guess, the checkbook that never balances, the plot that contains an unexpected twist after the other.
Baseball is disconcerting and confusing, irritating but entertaining, predictable but full of surprises.
Baseball is a matter of pitching and defending, striking and luck, and almost never involves as much urgency as we do in the press gallery and the stands want to believe.
Baseball makes us idiots, a simple game that never seemed harder to understand, a frustrating mental exercise from the first run to the ninth that teases us 162 days a year.
Baseball is the most successful team in the national league a week ago. She was swept by the Reds to Cincinnati in a four-game series for the first time in 35 years. Throwers Ferguson Jenkins and Steve Trout lost games for the Cubs in this series of April 1983. Future Hall of Fame member Ryne Sandberg took the lead in the Cubs. This Cubs team lost 91 games and finished fifth in East Newfoundland and Labrador.
This Cubs team still seems capable of winning over 91 games, the NL Central and perhaps even the pennant and the World Series.
It's also baseball.
It's worth remembering after cursing the reliever Pedro Strop or complaining about manager Joe Maddon and after determining that this Cubs team can not beat the Brewers, let alone the Nationals or the Dodgers.
And yet, despite the weekend, I maintain that the Cubs can still achieve their goals this season – though this may require Theo Epstein to become aggressive or creative before the trade deadline. This sounds more like a blow than a trend, so be careful what your heart screams in your head. A red flag, it is not necessarily.
It just seems too hard to understand the talent of this formation of Cubs that does not carry this team in the playoffs. Because of respect for a Reds team, the Cubs losing four consecutive games at the Great American Ball Park felt a little fluid; two Grand Slam shots, two home runs by pitchers, assorted injuries to Kris Bryant and the paddock. This is not an excuse as much as a recognition of the strangely unexpected turn of events in Ohio. Credit the Reds for playing well with Jim Riggleman. Blame the Cubs for playing too much or too low at their level of competition under Maddon, if you have to choose a thing worth complaining about.
But consider the same team as the buried Cubs fans to have a 5-0 lead on Sunday in Cincinnati looked like the best of the Netherlands by taking two out of three of the Dodgers a few days earlier at the end of the last home in Wrigley.
Consider that it is the last week of June, not September. During a season of 162 games, it gets old reminding people not to panic, but it's always the best advice. This is not 2016, no matter how many Cubs as Jon Lester wants to refer to this feeling. Investing emotionally in every round of every game could be recommended by bartenders in Chicago, but cardiologists warn against that. The Cubs headed to Los Angeles without the best relegers Brandon Morrow and C.J. Edwards Jr. and with Bryant still unsure with a painful shoulder.
On the same Monday, a $ 126 million man, Yu Darvish, will be rehabbing Class A South Bend, the triple A Duane Underwood will make his debut in the big leagues for the Cubs against the Dodgers. The output of Darvish means more than that of Underwood because what transpires later outweighs what is happening now. October is even more important than June.
Baseball requires discipline that can be hard to find after weekends like this one for Cubs. But it beats the alternative, which jumps to conclusions that recent history says will look silly at the end of the summer.
Twitter @DavidHaugh
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