Summing it up...

3 up, 3 down: Over and out
Cubs' bats silent again as Arizona sweeps

By Dan McGrath
Tribune staff reporter

The Cubs bowed out of the postseason about as ingloriously as a team can Saturday night, meek bystanders as the Arizona Diamondbacks completed a 3-0 National League Division Series sweep with a 5-1 victory that either stunned or embarrassed Wrigley Field into sullen silence.

Chris Young drove Rich Hill's first pitch of the game into the left-field bleachers, and the Cubs were never in the argument. The party died down in the bleachers, the ballpark and anywhere else Cubs fans gathered — watching a dispirited team manage just seven hits, strand nine baserunners and ground into four double plays will do that to the most convivial bash.

And yet there was something almost reassuring about the glum evening and the whole sad series.

No animals — billy goats, black cats, etc. — were harmed or even involved. No agility-challenged first baseman booted a grounder with a game on the line. And no innocent-bystander Cubs fan can be charged with altering the course of history by being in the wrong place at a terribly wrong time.

No, the oddball incidents that give the Cubs their own quirky place in sports history were missing this time. This series was settled on the field. The Diamondbacks outhit, outpitched and outscrapped the curiously lifeless Cubs, beating them every way one team can beat another. Beat them seven times in nine games this season, lest anyone come away thinking it was fluky.

Deft pitching, timely power and the emergence of young Stephen Drew as a star did in the Cubs, along with a total disappearing act by the heart of their batting order. Not some goofy 4-year-old debate over whether Luis Castillo's foul pop was catchable.

The '07 Cubs — expected to be the last under Tribune Co. ownership — will be remembered as a decent team that gave their fans more fun moments than flaky ones. They just weren't good enough to end a championship drought that drags on toward the century mark.

Wait till next year? Like we have a choice.

From Sunday's Chicago Tribune