Another Type of Perspective ...

A few weeks ago I wrote about perspective. But perspective comes in many forms. It can be deadly serious, a matter of life and death. Or it can apply to decidedly more frivolous matters - serious, but not deadly serious. Such as, say, your favorite baseball team.

As you can from looking at the side of my blog, the Cubs are doing well. Quite well, as a matter of fact - as of Wednesday afternoon, the team is off to its best start in 23 years. One of the Cubs, Ronny Cedeno, even declared after Monday's win over the Mets that the club was already thinking about the World Series. Now, obviously, I'm a rabid Cub fan, but I also know that talking about the Fall Classic at this extremely early point is folly. Very few pennants are ever won in April, though many of them have been lost in that first month of the season. And even that is not as much of a done deal as it has been in the past. In 2002 the Angels had a horrible first month, and still went on to win it all in October. Three years later Houston stumbled out of the gate so badly that the Chronicle declared the team dead on its front page. The Astros ended up as National League champions. And last year the Cubs sucked hard until until the beginning of June, when a clubhouse fight and one of Lou Piniella's patented tantrums shook Chicago from its slumber.

Then again, remember the aforementioned hot start in 1985? Want to guess where the Cubs finished that year? It wasn't in first.

Cub fans especially are quite sensitive to disruptions in the Force, good and bad. And it doesn't help that the team already has gotten so much hype because of the rapidly approaching 100-year vortex. Many of us groaned noticeably when we heard of Cedeno's quote. This is the kind of jumping the gun that has burned us time and again. At the very least, we thought, Cedeno will probably trip over a bat and blow his knee out sometime on Tuesday as punishment from the baseball gods. But no, that didn't happen.

Instead, the utility infielder hit a grand slam in another win over New York.

Hmmm ... It's only April ... it's only April ...