Cubs celebrate while other NL teams keep scrambling

Lou Piniella enjoyed a champagne shower in his first season as the Cubs manager. AP

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It was just last September about this time, if you'll remember, that the Cubs were putting the finishing touches on a 96-loss stinker, a waste of a season in which the North Siders finished dead last in the National League Central. It was a forgettable season all around, from Dusty Baker's lame duck managerial reign to Derrek Lee's lame wrist to the continuing saga of a couple of lame pitchers, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. It was, in many ways, a lowpoint for a franchise that wrote the definition of the term.

And now look at the Cubs. It's astonishing, isn't it, what a little $300 million makeover can do?

The Cubs clinched the Central division title on Friday night with a convincing 6-0 win over the Reds (and, in Milwaukee, an accommodating loss by the Brewers, 6-3 to San Diego), thus becoming the first NL team in a last-weekend free-for-all to snag a spot in the postseason. The NL West's Diamondbacks followed a few minutes later with a 4-2 win over the heretofore streaking Rockies. And a couple of other teams -- the Padres, mainly, and maybe the Phillies -- put themselves in pretty fine position for the season's final two days.

Friday's big party, though, belonged to the Cubs. Weighed down by huge expectations brought on by the $300 million expenditure on free agents over the winter, the Cubs got out to an awful start in April and May, tore apart the league in June and July, and simply screwed around too much in these past two months. They had lost three straight going into Friday night. But with ace Carlos Zambrano on the mound, they finally turned the corner, winning their first division title since 2003.

The Diamondbacks, with the best record in the NL, didn't win their division, but they did guarantee themselves at least a spot in the postseason with a win over the Rockies in Denver. In front of more than 50,000 fans at Coors Field, sinkerball specialist Brandon Webb stymied the Rockies and stopped their 11-game winning streak.

Friday night sapped a little drama out of the rest of the weekend. But there's still the NL East to consider, the collapse of the Mets vs. the rise of the Phillies. We still have to see what happens out West, with the Diamondbacks, Padres and still-alive Rockies. Some early week tiebreakers still could be in the cards.

The Cubs, though, can finally relax. Until next Wednesday, that is, when the postseason begins and they embark on the quest to win their first World Series title since 1908.

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