A City in Panic

If you looked around Chicago and read the papers, troubles a brewin'.

If you walked around Chicago, go around Wrigleyville or the South Side, you can feel it. What "it" is is panic and it's panic because even though, for the first time in 102 years that both the Cubs and White Sox are in the playoffs, excitement has been replaced with fear, anguish and disgust.

The National League Chicago team is down 0-2. And after losing to the Rays in St. Petersburg tonight, the American League side is also down 0-2. Chicago is 0-4 in the playoffs. And there goes the hopes for the "Red Line" World Series.

Today's Red Eye got it right with its front page. There is anxiety.

And not just because the Cubbies and Sox are both losing, but because of who they're losing to.

Let's face it. The Dodgers are only playoff-worthy because the National League West is the worst division in baseball. The Bums had the EIGHTH, that is the number that comes after seven and before nine, EIGHTH best record in the National League this year. 8TH!!!

The Dodgers had only 84 wins. If the Mets had been out west, then they wouldn't have had another meltdown. The Astros, who had the best record baseball after the all-star break, would have been in the playoffs. Hell, the Toronto Blue Jays would have been division champs if they played in the NL Worst.

And the Cubs, well, they had the best record in the National League. They've played two games at home. And they've gotten their assess handed to them. I've heard a lot of criticisms about Cubs fans, but I would also be silent at Wrigley Field, probably in shock, after seeing the Cubs' performance against Los Angeles.

Wrigleyville has been silenced.

Tampa is legit. But the White Sox had to play three consecutive de facto elimination games against Cleveland, Detroit and Minnesota just to punch their tickets to get to the playoffs. Now they stare at another elimination game Sunday.

But then again, it's the (Devil) Rays. A team who hasn't even seen another spot than the cellar of the American League East since their first year in 1998, until this year, when Tampa Bay finally won the division, going from worst to first.

It's a feel good story. But this is a club that no one believed in, even their own fans. The Rays' fans barely started to show up in September.

A baseball city like Chicago shouldn't be treated like this. One of those teams should make it to the LCS.

But, that's the beauty of baseball. And that's the albatross that hangs around Chicago. And it's the pain that plagues its fans.

102 years has been a long time for both the North Side and South Side of the city to get excited about October baseball at the same time.

The city was excited on Tuesday, when the Sox clinched the AL Central. They were excited at 5:30 local time Wednesday, when game 1 for the Cubs and Dodgers series started.

That excitement is gone, replaced by angst-ridden self-pity, anger and hopelessness.

But, if you were a Cubs or White Sox fan, don't you feel like that all the time?