Is It "Wait Till Next Year" Time Yet?

 It's the top of the 11th inning, your team is in the home stretch of the pennant race, the bases are loaded.  What do you do now?  Well, if you're the Chicago Cubs, you BLOW it!  Yes folks, once again the Cubs are in the midst of their September Swoon.  They not only blew that scoring opportunity, they left a total of 15 runners on base in the 5-4 loss to the Houston Astros.

"We had some opportunities and didn't get it done," Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee said. "That's a tough one to swallow."  Oh, ya think?!

Come on, people!!  I mean, it's not like the Cubs, who have now slipped a game back of the Milwaukee Brewers (again) were playing a real team.  No offense, folks, but there ain't a real team in the National League Central these days.  They are all quite pitiful as usual.  The win last night snapped a five-game losing streak for the Astros, and was just their fifth win in the last 13 games.  I mean, a lot of good Cecil Cooper has done for the Astros since taking over for Phil Garner.

"We continue to play hard, that's all you can ask," Cooper said.  

No, Cecil, it's not.  I think the fans of every one of these teams could ask that for a change, their teams played consistent fundamental baseball.  And that's the big thing here.  There is no consistency at all in the NL Central, other than the fact that you can count on them every single year to underwhelm the opposition and their fans.  I can't even bring myself to use the term "struggling" to describe any one of them because that would imply they are at least trying.

The truly maddening part of all of this is we're so close.  Only a game out of first.  We can still make it, right?  This could be our year.  Sure.  Why not?  It could happen.  Yeah.  All we have to do is...sigh...