You’re in the vacant lot between the 7-Eleven and the laundromat. You raise the bat up and call your shot. The Meat pitching just shakes his cropped head in annoyance and winds up, his mouth twisting inward as the muscles in his face tense up. His arm whips around toward you and the pitch is on its way.
There’s no going back now, you called the shot. If you allow doubt to creep in even for a millisecond, you’re ruined. There’s no whiffing. There’s no stepping out. There’s no excuse if you don’t do what you so boldly declared you were going to do.
You swing, hitting the ball directly on the sweet spot of the stick. The ball goes right where you said it would, over snot-nosed Scotty in left-center, a few chain-link fences, a railway or two, before finally making a beautiful thud in an empty garbage bin.
The boys are astonished. You are, too.
After the amazement has diminished, Meat turns to you and says, “Bet you can’t do that again.”
So, here we are with new Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein being asked to do what seemed so impossible with the Red Sox. After being hired as GM in Beantown in 2002, he put together a winning team by ’04 and halted 86 years of futility. Great job, young swashbuckler!
Now, do it again.
He did, three years later. Boston swept the Colorado Rockies in four games.
With such a track record, why have I come down with a nasty case of trepidation? Obviously, Tom Ricketts hired the most qualified person to formulate a team that can win its first World Series championship in more than a century. But will Epstein’s past success jinx his future in Chicago? If Jed Hoyer is such a viable and sought-after GM, why didn’t Ricketts just try to reel him in himself? And everyone knows presidents and GMs don’t win ballgames. Along with good play on the field, a little bit of luck is going to have to swing the Cubs’ way as well, something that has already happened under Epstein’s guidance in Boston.
How much luck can one guy have?
I guess the excitement we Cubs fans are feeling right now is derived purely from the fact that things are going to change — and change significantly. Ricketts wants to win. He’s done taking in the dumbfounded aura of owning the team he grew up idolizing. It’s down to business now. Epstein is going to make some major moves with the club.
He’s going to call the shot. But there certainly won’t be jubilation if it lands in the garbage bin.