Friday, September 18, 1998

BY SCOTT MacGREGOR
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Sammy Sosa signs autographs before Thursday's game. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

CHICAGO -- It's just before the stroke of midnight and people are streaming onto Waveland and Sheffield Avenues, rushing out of crowded bars and off stone porches.

Sammy Sosa has just clubbed his 63rd homer, a grand slam that breaks a 2-2 tie and eventually gives the Cubs a crucial 6-3 victory over the Padres that keeps their playoff hopes alive. These die-hard fans, watching the game played two time zones away on TV when they normally are in bed, are reveling in the moment.

"Wow! What a tremendous end to a ball game," says Jim Murphy, a bearded 50-year-old lifetime Cubs loyalist and the owner of Murphy's Bleachers, the popular bar and burger joint nestled behind Wrigley Field's center field bleachers at the intersection of Waveland and Sheffield.

Welcome to the best show in baseball, where the usually hapless Cubs are playing for a spot in the playoffs and their popular star Sosa is swinging for a spot in the record book.

The Reds will be part of it starting today when they pay the Cubs in first of a three-game series.

It used to be that when a Cubs player did something noteworthy, the late Harry Caray -- the broadcaster who loved the Cubs so much and who was so beloved by this city -- would tell his TV audience "They're dancing in the streets."

Boy, would Harry have loved this year.

As the 1998 baseball season careens into its final days, those long-suffering Cubs fans are doing more celebrating than they ever imagined. Every day or every night, it seems, there's something new to scream about.

From rookie phenom pitcher Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout breakthrough in May to Sosa's historic home run exploits to Gary Gaetti's 10th-inning, game-winning homer off Padres closer Trevor Hoffman Thursday, this has been a magical season for the Cubs and their loyal fans. No, they haven't won as many games as the juggernaut New York Yankees -- in fact the Cubs won't even win their division and are engaged in a battle with the Mets and Giants for the National League wild card -- but of all the great stories in this great renaissance season for baseball, no city has had more than Chicago.

Wood, Sosa, the nostalgia after the deaths of longtime broadcasters Caray and Jack Brickhouse, a playoff race for a franchise that hasn't been to the World Series since the end of World War II. Certainly the home run chase has been the biggest thing going this year, but the Cubs are as good a team story as there is in this game, even if if they don't make the playoffs.

The Cubs have been close to the promised land before in recent times -- they lost in the National League Championship Series in 1984 and '89, and were on the losing end of one of the biggest collapses in history in 1969, when they blew a hugelead over the Miracle Mets and missed the playoffs -- but for all the above reasons, 1998 ranks in many fans' minds as perhaps the most special. Adding to the luster is the turnaround from last season, when the Cubs started 0-14, a modern National League record for early-season futility.

"This exceeds '84 or '89," says Beth Murphy, Jim's wife. "This is amazing. They've come from out of the blue. Whoever thought Sammy's personality would be leading the way? This is very similar to '69 -- except at this time that year, it was a lot sadder."

The atmosphere these days in Wrigleyville, the neighborhood on Chicago's North Side near Lake Michigan, is positively electric. When the Cubs are home, Wrigley is brimming to overflow with 40,000 charged fanatics, whose roars for Sosa homers or Wood strikeouts seem to reverberate all the way up the shore to Wisconsin. When they're on the road, the Cubs are still The Story, relegating the pitiful Bears to an afterthought. And the crosstown White Sox, well, they were already losing the popularity contest. Who would you rather root for, Sammy Sosa or Albert Belle?

As first baseman Mark Grace says, this is a Cubs town. And it extends beyond the die-hards. In this city, which considers itself America's greatest sports town, the feats of its athletic heroes routinely push politics off the top of the page, and the Cubs and Sosa are adding to the legend.

"It's been pretty incredible simply because the Cubs are one of the most anemic teams in the history of any sport," explains 25-year-old Mike Fenner, a season-ticket holder who lives just a few blocks from the park and who on this day is watching the game at Murphy's.

"Most of the time, you see a few fights after games, even after a win. But after those games last weekend (when Sosa crushed four homers in three days to tie Mark McGwire at 62), there was nothing like that. Everybody was walking around shaking each other's hands. It was like walking out of church."

Sosa's enjoyment of the home run chase has been a joy for all Cubs fans, but the real excitement comes in the playoff race. The Cubs haven't been in the post-season since losing to the Giants in 1989, and they're going to have to finish with one heck of a run to make it this year.

"Sosa makes it special for people who aren't Cubs fans," Fenner says. "For Cubs fans, the Sosa thing is incredible, but the playoffs are what counts."

It's especially interesting that the wild card will come down to the Cubs and Mets, the same two hated rivals who battled in that infamous fall of '69. The Cubs lead by a game going into this weekend's series at Wrigley against the Reds, with eight games to play.

"We're not going to let the Mets do it to us this year," vows Jim Murphy.

Maybe fate will be kinder this time. In '69, it was the fabled black cat that did the Cubs in, the ebony feline that ran across the field as the playoffs slipped out of their grasp.

This year, however, the breaks are going the Cubs' way. Their pitching staff gets blown up for double digits last weekend against the Brewers, and they come back to win on game-winning homers by Orlando Merced, a castoff from Boston, and Grace, the franchise's cornerstone. Thursday, their 4-3 defeat of the Padres ends on a disputed call at first that should have gone against the Cubs, but didn't.

Maybe Harry is enjoying this season after all.

"If you believe in angels, yes," Murphy says.