In Year 122 of a longstanding rivalry, it has finally come to this:
The Cubs want to be the Cardinals on the field, and the Cardinals want to be the Cubs off the field.
So far, only one is succeeding.
The Cardinals recently built their own Wrigleyville model called Ballpark Village, a team-controlled restaurant and entertainment complex beyond the left-center-field wall of Busch Stadium. They've even copied the rooftop concept, without the burden of rooftop owners making money off their product.
Of course, St. Louis also has a model franchise, one that will play host to October baseball this week for the 11th time since 2000.
This is where the Cubs want to be, and it's quite a bit more difficult than building some faux-rooftops behind your bleachers.
The division-winning Cardinals finished 17 games ahead of the last-place Cubs this season and have been named Baseball America's Organization of the Year twice in three years. They also have won four pennants and two World Series since the turn of the century.
Don't even ask about the last century.
Asked his opinion of the Cardinals on Tuesday during his now-traditional autopsy on the Cubs' season, President Theo Epstein replied: "How do you balance admiration and contempt, right? I'm a Cub, so I have to hate the Cardinals. But I also have to admire the way they run their baseball shop, and they have for basically the better part of a century."
Epstein should've stopped at "hate the Cardinals," but he's relatively new to this rivalry and continued lauding the "Cardinal Way."
"In some respects -- and I hate to say this on the record -- but we have to do a lot of the things they do to be successful," he said. "On the other hand, I think we're building something that has a chance to go toe-to-toe with them and surpass them. I think we have a chance to win this division on a consistent basis, and we're going to need to in order to win the World Series."
Those aren't exactly fighting words, like the ones Dusty Baker used during the season-defining, beanball-filled, five-game series against Tony La Russa's team in September 2003.
"Really, if he thinks (the fight) has been on so far, he has a whole decade full of us coming," Baker said. "This is just the beginning."
It turned out to be the end, but Baker had the right idea. Sad to say, more than a decade later, the rivalry barely registers on the hate-o-meter.
There's no real animosity for the Cardinals left in the Cubs organization. Baker despised them. Ditto Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano, who loathed them so much, he delivered his infamous "We stinks" speech and called out closer Carlos Marmol for letting ex-Cub Ryan Theriot beat them at Busch Stadium in June 2011. The previous winter, Theriot wound up on the Cardinals and pronounced himself "on the right side of the rivalry," causing his banishment from Cubs Conventions.
Ted Lilly, now a special assistant to Epstein, can explain how the rivalry works. Lilly ran over Yadier Molina at the plate during the 2008 stretch run, putting the catcher on his back. The collision caused Molina to double over in pain after Lilly's knee unintentionally went into Molina's groin, which Cubs fans refer to as "a YouTube classic."
But any notion the rivalry was still heated was extinguished Aug. 31 at Busch Stadium when Cardinals starter John Lackey jawed at Starlin Castro down the first-base line after Castro yelled at himself for missing a pitch and flying out to end the inning. First-base coach Eric Hinske and Molina restored order, and we waited for the Cubs' response.
Would the Red Sox have let a Yankees pitcher try to intimidate one of their young stars like that? Not likely. And former Cubs pitchers such as Wood, Zambrano, Lilly, Matt Clement and Ryan Dempster would've no doubt drilled the appropriate Cardinals hitter in the next inning.
Instead, Travis Wood served up a home run to Matt Holliday, which ignited a Cardinals comeback victory. They won the division, coincidentally, by one game.
Epstein said during Tuesday's news conference the Cubs will be "must-see TV" in the next few years, calling their mission to win a World Series "one of the more meaningful quests in sports."
Sounds good.
But to get where the Cardinals are, the Cubs have to change that balance of contempt and admiration, focusing on the former instead of the latter.
Sports on 10/02/2014