BY JOHN McALEAVEY | Here is a column that practically wrote itself. How lucky am I that October 21, 2015, is a Wednesday, because as everyone knows, Wednesdays are My 2 Sense days! In case you haven’t read about it or were not a teenager or older back in 1989, today is also being referred to as “Back to the Future Day”. In the motion picture Back to the Future II (the follow-up to 1985’s Back to the Future), Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his scientist friend, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), travel back to the future day of, you guessed it–today (October 21, 2015)! So, since the topic is everywhere, who am I to refuse a seat on the bandwagon? The film’s writers made many predictions about the day, most of which were false, like we’d be driving flying cars with bar code license plates, we’d be wearing our pants inside out, and we’d still be getting all of our news from newspapers. Who knew they’d be so prophetic or at least pretty close to prophetic when it came to baseball however?
In a scene from the movie, Marty reads in USA Today that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Yes, splashed across the front page were the headlines: Cubs Sweep Series in 5. However, the writers of the movie had them beating “Miami” in a best of nine series. While they were correct in predicting that Miami would someday have a baseball team (Marlins), they were wrong about the Cubs winning the World Series, or at least the jury is still out on that prediction. Tonight at Wrigley Field, the aforementioned Chicago Cubs will play game #4 of the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets. Unfortunately for them, they are in the unenviable position of trailing in the series 3-0. Coming back from that deficit is next to impossible, in fact there has only been one team to accomplish the feat–the 2004 Boston Red Sox. What do these Cubs have in common with that team you ask; well, they share the same club architect/General Manager in Theo Epstein. He built the “idiots”, as they referred to themselves; and they clawed their way back to defeat one New York baseball team (the Yankees) in the ALCS. Of course, they went on to win the World Series and end the curse of the Bambino. Does his current club have a rally in them to knock off New York’s National League team and play for a chance to end the Curse of the Billy Goat?
I do know one thing for sure–it would be ironic and sobering were the Cubs to be eliminated from the playoffs on the exact day they were predicted to have won it all–even it were only in the movies.
And that is My 2 Sense for this week. Now I’m off on my hover-board to mail some letters.
Photo credit: youtube.com / screencrush.com
