Cubs autumn

Well ... maybe, anyway.

(And, no, I'm not trying to be mean, or to feng any Cubs fan's well-deserved shui. I'm just a bitter old man. It's the consequence of rooting for a baseball team -- yes, the Pittsburgh Pirates, you know that -- that won 98 games last year and unaccountably haven't been able to get out of their own way this year. Last I looked, they were, like, 50 games behind the Cubs. I honestly don't know how this happened.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Cubs autumn.

That it's been a Cubs summer is undeniable, because it's been a summer unseen in Wrigleyville since John Dillinger was getting smoked outside the Biograph. Besides clinching their first NL Central title since 2008 (which they did last night), the 2016 Cubs are on pace to post their best winning percentage since 1935 (they're on track to finish at .637). Their starters' ERA of 2.89 would be their best since 1933. And they're pace to finish with a plus-258 run differential, which would be their biggest since 1906.

When, you know, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown and Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance were still playing.

And when, ahem, they were two years away from winning the World Series in 1908.

Which, as we all know, is the last time the Cubs won the Series, blah-blah-blah, yada-yada-yada.

So there is this inevitable sense now that This Is It. The Cubs are doing things they haven't done in 81, 83, 110 years. How could this end any other way now than with them doing something they haven't done in 108 years?

Of course, being the Cubs (and because I'm a bitter old man), this could just be their biggest setup of all time, too.

Time to cue this again ...