Chicago Hope

The Chicago Cubs' annual slide to oblivion, otherwise known in the Windy City as the unofficial start of summer, seemingly began last Thursday. After leading 7-1 in the sixth inning, they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies 8-7 on a day when the Chicago first baseman allowed the winning run to score on a double error, the rightfielder slipped on his way home with the would-be tying run and the usual spate of angry postgame callers to a local radio station included the losing pitcher. No one had invented a way of coughing it up so suddenly since Heimlich. Moreover, the Cubs carried a four-game losing streak and six defeats in seven games into a series in which the best team in the National League, the Atlanta Braves, would start three pitchers with a combined record of 21-4. "Excruciating," said Chicago manager Jim Riggleman. He meant the defeat, not the prospect of 110 more games.

The first day of the rest of the season, however, dawned implausibly brilliant. Judging by the 38,010 people who jammed Wrigley Field last Friday afternoon and the hundreds who watched from atop surrounding apartment buildings—about 13,000 more than had witnessed Thursday's debacle—it was a good day to call in sick. Many fans wore T-shirts that read WE'VE GOT WOOD, or waved K cards, or hung the cards on lines along the rooftops like Chinese lanterns. Oblivion never looked like this.

"You're as good as your next day's pitcher," Riggleman said, which explains how Wrigley Field could be so juiced about a team struggling to keep its head above .500. Righthander Kerry Wood had the ball. Yesterday was ancient history. The Cubs were going great.

"There's a special buzz around the ballpark when he pitches," says Chicago general manager Ed Lynch. "It's like a carnival, a happening. The players sense it. Everyone knows it when they come to the park-Kerry's pitching today."

Wrigley has become the Wood Shed, where a 6'5", 225-pound 20-year-old who's still growing is taking a buzz saw to the culture of losing in Cubsville. In just nine starts Wood has made the summer meaningful in Chicago and placed himself in the city's alphabet of athletic icons. What Singletary did for the D, Jordan for the J and Rodman for the T, Wood has done for the K.

In seven innings Wood punched out 13 Braves, blowing the last of his 126 pitches past a guy who eats fastballs for lunch, lefthanded Ryan Klesko, with two men on and lefthander Bob Patterson throwing superfluously in the Chicago bullpen. "I'd gotten myself into that situation," Wood said, "and I wanted to get out if it."

Wood makes anything possible. Trailing Braves lefthander Tom Glavine 2-1 in the eighth, the Cubs rallied for a 5-3 victory, with the winning runs scoring in the 11th on Brant Brown's first major league home run off a southpaw, rookie John Rocker. The next day Chicago beat Kevin Millwood (7-1 entering the game) 9-8, when Matt Mieske hit his first home run with a man on base since August 31, 1996. Mieske was playing rightfield only because Sammy Sosa had hurt his left thumb on Thursday when he slipped and fell between third and home. On Sunday the Cubs completed die sweep with a 4-2 win.

That victory gave the Braves their first four-game losing streak this year. It also left Chicago with a 31-24 record a bit more than one third of the way through the season—their best such start this decade (chart, page 67). "What are you getting at, 90 wins?" said shortstop Jeff Blauser about Chicago's pace. "We can't think that way. For a team like the Yankees or Braves, they can look that far ahead. We have to have smaller goals."

For an organization that's coming off a last-place finish with a league-worst 94 losses, that hasn't finished within a dozen games of first place in the 1990s, that has won 90 games only three times in the previous 52 years, consider this one small but noteworthy achievement: June matters. Never mind the Astros, who had a two-game lead over Chicago in the National League Central. For a change, the relevance of the Cubs' season has survived the end of the Bulls'.

"I know among the fans there's this sense of waiting for things to go bad, based on 90 years of history," Lynch says, referring to the longest championship drought in U.S. major sports. "We know they come to have a good time at a beautiful ballpark, to be treated well by very professional ushers and to enjoy the experience. But we want to add the expectation that the Cubs are going to win."