Chicago Cubs: Top five moments during the team’s window of contention

Chicago Cubs: Beating the Cards was a weight lifted

It’s getting harder and harder to remember the vitriol since they haven’t been the Goliath they once were, but it’s still there. For most Cubs fans, there’s still a hatred (or at least a modest or healthy dislike) for the Cardinals that supersedes pretty much everything else when the two teams meet.

At one point, the Cubs could never beat the Cardinals in a big game. Yes, that’s right – never. The Cardinals and their 11 World Series championships and their “Best fans in baseball” were easy targets for Cubs fans’ invective. Chicago was the red-headed stepchild in a terribly abusive relationship. Jealous, annoyed, frustrated, and hopeless, that all changed in the 2015 postseason.

The Cardinals were the favorites due to their 100 win season, but the NL Central actually had the three best teams in baseball that year as the Pirates (dispatched by the Cubs; see last slide) had won 98 and the Cubs with 97 wins.  They all had to face off against once another early in the National League playoffs in 2015, and it was then that the Cubs finally broke through against their older brothers.

After losing the first game in the most boring city on Earth, the Cubs won the next three, thereby punching their ticket to the NLCS. Whether it was Javier Baez and his monster oppo taco or Kyle Schwarber’s moonshot onto the scoreboard, the Cubs showed the Cards who was to be the dominant power in the Central for the next half decade.