Relax! It's not a prediction but rather the latest slogan adopted by baseball's most Series-starved franchise. For these Cubs, however, there is a creeping feeling that it may be more than that

	The Cubs have invested more than $275 million in Ramirez, Lee and Soriano (above), each of whom is batting around .300 and slugging over .500. Al Tielemans/SI

Mark Derosa, the Everyman on Everyone's Team, was in rightfield early in the Chicago Cubs' recent 10-game homestand when he spotted a sign in the Wrigley Field stands: IT'S GONNA HAPPEN. There was something compelling, even mystical, about the words. They stuck in his head, like the lyrics of a long-ago song on the car radio. The "it," of course, can be open-ended, ambiguous. (A meteor is going to wipe out the North Side? Will Ferrell is going to make a movie in which he doesn't strip to his skivvies?) Cubs fans, however, are glass-half-full people -- usually after chugging the other half -- and the sign's meaning, in context, left little to the imagination. "When teams go on runs and good things happen to them, there always seems to be a slogan that follows them," DeRosa says. "It seems that this one has been popping up a bit."

Now in their 99th year of rebuilding, the Cubs' losing is just a few rungs below death and taxes on the inevitability scale. But having perfected the art of defeat, losing in tragicomic ways that challenge the mind and numb the soul, maybe at long last, to paraphrase scripture, the lion will lie down with the billy goat and the Cubs will do something as delightful as win the...

No, the Cubs don't need to be burdened by another jinx. But they are looming, within 3 1?2 games of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central, despite a 3-0 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday that left the Cubs with a 7-3 mark for the homestand. And even the players are beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, It Could Happen. "It has to, it's inevitable," says Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot. "We keep playing hard, sooner or later it'll happen."

They may be in a mediocre division in a league as soft as a passing summer shower, but the Cubs have become a genuine presence. They have rapped out clutch hits and received superb pitching while putting together, at week's end, the best record in baseball since June 3, recapturing the magic of the Wrigley experience as it was in 2003 and '04, when the Cubs were star-crossed contenders.

Sure, it's been axiomatic for most of the past quarter of a century that not even bad baseball can blunt good times in America's favorite baseball theme park. But that's like saying the Vatican is more famous for its art than its religious significance. "We're sold out, no matter what," All-Star first baseman Derrek Lee says. "But now the fans are on their feet, hanging on every pitch, where in the past they were just out there drinking beer, talking to each other, having a party. Now they pay attention."

The Cubs give them little choice because every win seems to contain a moment or two to burn on the CD of memory, providing the grand stories that a city tells itself about its winning teams. Consider last week: