Ex-Cubbies share playoff hopes in Joliet
JOLIET -- This may still be the Cubs' year.
"A Cubs fan is always optimistic," said Chris Suffecool after Wednesday's Game 1 loss.
Terence Guider-Shaw/staff photographer
The associated press
Suffecool, a Washington Junior High School teacher traded a desk for a dugout Thursday for the Joliet Grade Schools Foundation for Educational Excellence's fifth-annual celebrity fundraiser at Silver Cross Field.
Suffecool and other fans shared the field with former major leaguers, including Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Tommy John and former Cubs Dave Kingman, Jay Johnstone and Bob Dernier.
"This is so cool sitting in the same dugout as (Kingman)," Suffecool said. "I remember coming home from school and turning on the game to watch him at a home run."
Suffecool believes the Cubs' pitching will allow them to overcome the Diamondbacks and advance in the playoffs. His sentiments are echoed by Dernier, a member of the division-winning 1984 Cubs team. Now, he is an instructor with the organization.
"Our chances are very good. It's the best of five and we've got some good matchups," he said.
Dernier said he and some of his former teammates are rooting for this year's team to go further than they did.
"We want to get rid of that kind of thinking that (it's strange) we made it. We want it to be more along the lines of 'We expect to make it,'" he said.
Suffecool hopes the team gets to that kind of consistency.
"After (playoff losses in) 1984, 1989, 2003, if they lost again I think another piece of my heart would die. But that's an 'if' right now and so we won't talk about that," he said.
While Suffecool won't discuss disaster, "Spaceman" Lee will. The former Red Sox pitcher speculated on the origins of the Cubs' lack of success and what could happen if they met his former team in the World Series.
"It would be the end of mankind as we know it," he said.
Living up to his nickname, Lee speculated a giant desert hurricane generated by a meeting between the Cubs and Red Sox would strand the teams on the East Coast.
"They'd be stuck in a cemetery in Brookline, (Mass.). They'd never get home, and if they can't get home how can they be crowned world champions?"
Lee also believes bad karma is responsible for the team's postseason record.
"There's a curse. Something happened in the north end. Probably Frank Chance did something," he said, expressing distaste for the Hall of Fame first baseman who died in 1924.
"Die-hard" Sox fan Tom Grotovsky, of Mokena, said he's still glad to see a Chicago team make the playoffs.
"If we can't be there, at least some people will be happy, like my brother-in-law," he said.
Grotovsky said the White Sox championship two years ago allows them to maintain a "been there, done that" attitude.
"We're much more tolerant now," he said. "And a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon."
But Jeff DeGraw, owner of Matt's Sports Cards, said the bandwagon isn't as intense this year.
"In the last few weeks, I've seen more people wearing Cubs stuff, but I don't sense the same excitement there was the last time they made the playoffs," he said.
DeGraw believes the buzz seems muted because the Cubs weren't as dominant getting into the playoffs this time.
"You don't know what's going to happen," he said. "(Cubs Manager Lou) Piniella pulled (starting pitcher Carlos) Zambrano to save him for Game 4. But if you don't win Games 1, 2 or 3, there is no Game 4."
Reporter Brian Stanley can be reached at (815) 729-6079 or bstanley@scn1.com