Night falls hard in Wrigley

This is why we still love this game, stubborn coot that it is these days. It is too slow for its times and too set in its ways, but when October comes and night falls fast and the long winter is one swing of the bat away, it still rivets us like nothing else.

And so to Wrigley Field last night, where the NL wildcard game lasted 13 innings and more than five hours and yet no one could bear to look away. Kyle Freeland for the Rockies and Jon Lester for the Cubs were magnificent on the bump. The Rockies got a run in the first and Freeland made it stand until Javy Baez tied it in the eighth. And then ...

And then, five more innings crept past on little cats' feet, as the evening grew late and every Cubs fan wrung his hands and perched on the edge of his seat. Finally, Tony Wolters -- a third-string catcher with a .170 batting average -- drove home the go-ahead run off a Kyle Hendricks changeup, and half an inning later it was all over.

Rockies 2, Cubs 1.

Welcome to winter, Chicago.

And such a very Cubs way for it all to end, proving once more that even in these palmy days for the formerly star-crossed northsiders, their capacity for tormenting their faithful remains robust. Could they have been anymore cruel, dangling a division title and the best record in the National League in front of Cubs Nation all summer and then snatching it away in less than 48 hours?

First they lost the tiebreaker, and the title,  in Wrigley. Then they lost the win-or-go-home playoff game, in Wrigley. And not just lost, but made their fans endure 13 unrelentingly tense innings to do it.

I mean, if they were going to lose, why not just lose 9-2 and be done with it?  Would that have been so hard?

As a matter of fact, yes.

Here's the thing: In building the Cubs into perennial contenders and World Series champs at last, Theo Epstein rebuilt the culture as well. The old Lovable Losers would have just caved early and eased Cubs Nation into a winter of shrugged shoulders and "oh, well, it's the Cubs."  But a team built to win World Series is a team built not to go gently.

And so the Cubs fought. And fought. And fought. And thus made it a much harder thing when they did go down.

"Wait 'til next year," used to be the old watchword for Cubs fans, spoken with conscious irony and a certain acceptance of inexorable fate.

Now?

Now every year is supposed to be next year. And if there is waiting, it is waiting 13 innings for the bitter end to come.