e, but it cant. You have to approach it differently. ... It would be like the Golden State Warriors

CHICAGO -- Suppose the ivy could talk. Think about it.What would you ask it? What would it say?On a magical Friday night on the north side of Chicago, the World Series will arrive at Wrigley Field for the first time in the lifetime of everyone from Kyle Schwarber to David Ross, from?Albert Almora?to Joe Maddon, from Eddie Vedder to Bill Murray.The last time, before this night, was Oct. 10, 1945. That was 25,950 days ago. That was 622,800 hours ago. That was a dozen presidents ago.But only one ivy crop ago.The ivy withers every winter and regenerates every spring. The leaves fall off, but the vines remain. It has been that way since the ivy was first planted in 1937. So not only does that ivy cover the outfield wall and make Wrigley famous. That ivy has seen it all.It was there when Cubs starter Hank Borowy was knocked out in the first inning in Game 7 of that 1945 World Series. It was there when Mark Prior and Kerry Wood couldnt finish the deal in Games 6 and 7 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. It was there, basically, for everything.So what would that ivy say if we could just ask it about this year? About these Cubs. And about Friday night at the corner of Clark and Addison, Cubs versus Indians, Game 3 of the 2016 World Series. A night of history. A night of celebration. A night to appreciate all the Fridays in all the Octobers where all a World Series meant was happening somewhere else.What would the ivy say? I dont believe it, former Cubs reliever Dan Plesac?said.What would the ivy say? Uncharted territory, said grounds-crew member Dan Kiermaier (who is, yes, the brother of Kevin, the Rays own human highlight reel in center field).What would the ivy say? I ... must ... hang ... on ... to ... this ... vine ... to ... see ... us ... win ... it. ... all, quipped ESPNs Doug Glanville, a one-time No. 1 draft pick of the Cubs.Now the Cubs cant win it all Friday evening, obviously. This World Series is tied at one win apiece. So nobody can win anything before at least Sunday. And lets not ever forget that the Indians arent exactly the Washington Generals, so they have no interest in letting the Cubs win, period.But that doesnt make this night any less memorable. Not when it has been 71 years since the last game of this magnitude at Wrigley. Not when there were no fewer than 16 (yes, 16) different places you could find the words WORLD SERIES plastered or painted or electrified all over Wrigley on Thursday -- on the dugout roof, on the dugout railing, sprayed onto the infield grass or shining brightly from every video board and message board in the joint.And not when the ivy has begun to turn red.If your team is still standing and youre actually playing baseball at Wrigley Field and the ivy is turning red, Glanville said Thursday, that means youve done something great [because] you have to play pretty late in the season to see red ivy. ... That only happens one time of the year. The problem for the Cubs is that its been like Halleys Comet. When it only comes around like every 75 years, thats not good. But if you can make it an annual event, now youve got a dynasty.When these Cubs arrived back at Wrigley the other night, several hours (and one airplane ride) after their Game 2 win in Cleveland, they got an instant reminder of what had happened in this ballpark the last time they played a home game, a mere four days earlier.The locker room was a mess, catcher David Ross reported, with a laugh. We walked in last night at about 2:30 [a.m.], and they still had the fans going on the carpet if that tells you anything. It was a wreck in here.It was the last vestige of the cleanup following a raucous celebration Saturday night, the night the Cubs eliminated the Dodgers in the NLCS and earned the right to bring the World Series back to Wrigley. But it wasnt only the baseball team that celebrated that night.There were 42,386 people inside Wrigley Field -- and who knows how many thousands outside the gates. And their own celebration was just as loud, just as long and just as emotional. It was a not-so-sneak preview of the sort of electricity you can expect to see at Wrigley again on Friday. Better power up the spare generators.I have never been to a sporting event in my life like Saturday night, said Plesac, who actually grew up hating the Cubs as a White Sox fan in Indiana -- until he pitched for the Cubs in 1993 and 94, and began to understand what makes the franchise so unique. I mean, I walked around this ballpark -- and goose bumps.He watched 42,000 Cubs fans hug and bond and sing Go Cubs Go with tears streaming down their faces. And the only word he could think of to describe them was euphoric -- because theyd waited a lifetime for this night. So they wouldnt let it go, couldnt let it go.Thousands remained inside the gates of Wrigley for nearly two hours after the game, trying to hang on to the moment. The streets of Wrigleyville were so jammed well after 2 a.m., it looked like rush hour in a lot of towns.People were not ready to go home, said Leah Spagnoli, the general manager of Yak-Zies, a famed Clark Street hangout for the past 27 baseball seasons. The energy that night was unlike anything Ive ever seen. It was dreamlike.When players finally left the park well after midnight, they were blown away by what they saw -- the sight of decades of bottled-up emotions spilling into a party that looked as if it might never end.Just getting out of here was kind of crazy, Ross said. The parking lot over there where our families are was just wall-to-wall with people and family, and everybody hugging and congratulating them. ... I dont think we got out of here until 1, maybe 2 oclock in the morning. So it was crazy. I heard even the Dodgers bus couldnt leave right away.And the bash was still going the next day, too. Utility man Chris Coghlan told a tale of venturing out of the house to go to Whole Foods the day after the game and running across a different buzz all around town, complete with dogs trotting around wearing Cubs jerseys.But it feels as if that buzz began six months ago and has barely let up since. You will feel it right through your TV screen Friday night, because this World Series is the culmination of a special journey, not just of a baseball team but of a fan base.This has been unlike anything Ive ever experienced before, said Spagnoli, who has worked at Yak-Zies for eight years. The energy is different. The people are different. The crowds are different.Her grandfather, Kenny Miller, founded the original Yak-Zies at a different North Side address in 1966. Her father, Joe, then ran this location for more than two decades after it opened in 1990. So theyve been dealing with Cubs fans for half a century. But never, ever have they had a year like this year, as people gravitated toward a special team and a special ballpark.Were third generation, Leah Spagnoli said. And this is what weve been waiting for.But of course, this is what all the generations of Cubs fans have been waiting for -- that season that didnt break their hearts. That season when the ballpark was the big stage for the baseball team, not the other way around.So on this night, as the World Series heads back to Wrigley Field, youll be able to feel the presence of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo, of Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson, of Fergie Jenkins and Rick Reuschel, of all the stars who never had a moment like this one. But for Wrigley and the Cubs of 2016, nostalgia is finally just the background noise in a much bigger saga.We are very much aware of everything thats gone on in the past, Maddon said Thursday. But we have to live in the present. Otherwise, youll never be able to get to this juncture in the season.Well, theyve clearly pulled off that juggling act because here they are. Its Game 3 of the World Series, in the shadow of the reddening ivy. So if last weekends euphoria was any sort of preview of what is to come Friday night, you know what that means.Yeah, Spagnoli said. Order a lot more beer.Shoes Online UK Review . Clarke was injured while practicing on the Doha Golf Club range after the pro-am on Tuesday. The Northern Irishman arrived at the course on Wednesday hoping to start, but after hitting a few balls on the practice putting green Clarke advised officials he was not fit to play. Fake Shoes UK . -- Jonathan Drouin gave Halifax the boost it needed to edge host Sherbrooke Phoenix 3-2 in a shootout in Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action. https://www.shoesukonline.com/ . Team physician Dr. Steve Traina performed the surgery Friday. Robinson was injured in a spill underneath the Nuggets basket during the first quarter of Wednesday nights loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. Wholesale Shoes UK . Louis Cardinals. Victorino is batting sixth and playing right field after missing two games because of back tightness. Shoes UK From China .S. hockey team after paying his dues as an NHL general manager for more than three decades and giving up a lot of his free time to help USA Hockey.CHICAGO -- The 2001 Mariners won 116 games, and they couldnt do it. The 1995 Indians were 56 games over .500, and they couldnt do it. The 2004 Cardinals won 105 games, and all theyre known for is being That Team That Lost to the Red Sox.Those three tremendous teams all had one thing in common -- and this is where we would advise the 2016 Cubs to pay close attention. Once upon a time, all of them were clearly The Best Darned Team in Baseball, just like the Cubs of this year. Over the regular season, that is. Ah, but what did that get them?Uh, not a World Series parade. Thats for sure. You know what they got out of it? An unhappy ending, nightmares that keep springing back to life and scars that never heal. Thats what.So even as the Cubs head back to Wrigley Field on Saturday night for an epic National League Championship Series Game 6 that Cubs Nation might never forget, Joe Maddon knows the landscape is still filled with land mines. And not all those land mines are named Clayton Kershaw, either. The biggest land mine of all might just be known as baseball -- or, at least, baseball in the multilayered wild-card era.I think that the system is built for the best team having a chance to lose, Maddon said with a knowing chuckle.Well, he has no idea (by his own admission) how right he is. So here come the shocking details:? This is Year 22 of the wild-card era. Just twice in the previous 21 seasons has a team like the Cubs, which led the major leagues outright in victories, gone on to win the World Series. The only two to win it all: the 1998 and 2009 Yankees. (No National League team has done it in 30 years, since the 1986 Mets.)? But even if we include teams that tied for the best record in the sport, the percentage of best teams that win a championship in baseball is much lower than in the other three major professional sports. In MLB, its just 19 percent (4-of-21) under this format. In the NFL, according to ESPN Stats and Information research, its 31 percent (8-of-26) under the current playoff format. In the NHL, its also 31 percent (11-of-36) since that league expanded to 16 playoff teams. And in the NBA, its a whopping 48 percent (16-of-33) in 33 seasons under the current 16-team setup.Suppose, however, we consider a whole new definition of what constitutes the best teams. Suppose we just look at teams that have won 100 games in the wild-card era. Well, the odds dont get any better. The Cubs are the 23rd team in the wild-card age to win 100 or more. You know how many of the previous 22 went on to win the World Series? That would be precisely two (again, those 1998 and 2009 Yankees).But why? Thats the question. What makes this mission so close to impossible? What is it about the baseball postseason that sends so many great teams careening off an October cliff? We decided to ask a group of men who have lived through it.Now granted, one of them (Joe Torre) managed those 1998 Yankees, a juggernaut that actually made it to the land of champagne and ticker tape. But all of these men have lived through enough October pain to understand exactly why winning a title in baseball is the toughest road in sports. So here are the tales they tell:Theres not enough reward for being greatFirst off, think about what you get for being the best team. You get home-field advantage through the league championship series. And thats about it. But is that enough? Home field is a huge advantage in those other sports. But in baseball, it can actually be a disadvantage, Torre thinks.Im probably in the minority, but I always thought that starting a series on the road was an advantage, he said. And thats because the home team is supposed to win twice. So if you go in and win the first one in their place, now you can run the table. Ive always thought the home team had a lot more pressure on them.And guess which team he uses as the perfect example of that pressure? Right you are: The Cubs, even though the Cubs team that his Dodgers played back in 2008 was never in the same position to win that these Cubs are in. But Torre has spent enough of his life observing Cubs fans to admit he wanted to start that series in Chicago.When I managed the Dodgers in 08, I think we benefited in 08 from them not winning the World Series, Torre said, because we went into Chicago, and all they talked about was this drought or curse or whatever you want to call it -- and we wind up sweeping them. Even though [that Cubs team] had nothing to do with it, [they] still had to answer for it.When things are going great and you see the home team feeding off the euphoria in the stands, its one of the most joyous sights in sports. But when things suddenly stop going so great? Uh-oh. Fans can get tense -- especially in some of Americas most nervous metropolises. And when they do, you know who can get tense right there with them? Were about to let you in on that.Even great teams feel the pressureCharlie Manuel isnt over it yet. In 2011, he managed a Phillies team that was a lot like the 2016 Cubs. It was a team that had That Look from the first day of spring training, and then went out and won 102 games -- five more than any other team in baseball that season.But if you dont recall the 2011 Phillies World Series parade, thats because it never happened, of course. And the manager still stews over all the strange stuff that befell that team in its memorable loss to the wild-card Cardinals in one of the best division series of modern times. There was the Rally Squirrel that unnerved Roy Oswalt. And Cliff Lee blowing a four-run lead (for just the second time in his life). And two balls his outfielders didnt catch in the shadows of a late-afternoon start. And, especially, a traumatic 1-0 loss in Game 5 to a brilliant Chris Carpenter.So five years later, do you want to guess what Manuel remembers most about that Game 5? Its the tension that welled up in the stands and the tension that enveloped his players as the zeroes and the pressure mounted.I remember everything about it, Manuel said. And you know what? The ballpark was tense. Our fans were tense. Our players were tense, especially after we played a few innings and we werent ahead. And all of a sudden, we started swinging real hard. Go back and look at it ... the balls we chased and how hard we were swinging. We were trying to get it all back too quick, when we still had time in the game to be ourselves.On one level, Manuel still finds it amazing that the great players on that team -- a team filled with men who had won a World Series and played in so many postseason games -- would feel that weight, get undone by that pressure. But on another level, he has seen it too many times, over too many years, to be shocked. He was the hitting coach on that 1995 Indians team too -- and even that powerhouse lineup, he said, definitely felt the pressure in losing that World Series to the Braves.You can see it, even on winning teams, Manuel said. There is a feeling there. And whether athletes want to admit it or not, theres a fear of failure that definitely can creep in, in those big games like that.So far in this postseason, the Cubs have been as good as it gets at deflecting those feelings. But it wouldnnt be hard to imagine that same tension gripping Wrigley Field on Sunday night, if the Cubs should lose to Kershaw in Game 6 and then have?to win Game 7.dddddddddddd. Now would it?The pressure grows every yearAt least this Cubs team appears to be in the beginning of what could be an extended window to win. But imagine being the exact opposite of this team -- a group of players who have begun to recognize that theyre at the end of their window and havent won nearly as much as anyone (including them) thinks they should.If that sounds like the Braves of 1991-2005, congratulations. Youve just won a copy of The Life and Times of Jeff Blauser. OK, no you havent. But youve definitely been paying attention, because with every year the Braves didnt win a second World Series, after beating Cleveland in 1995, the heat on the core of that team grew a little more scorching.The reality is, said John Smoltz, Foxs lead baseball analyst, we should have won in 96. So we should have won back-to-back.But because Jim Leyritz hit the long ball of a lifetime, that team didnt win two World Series in a row. And even though the Braves kept going back to October for another nine consecutive seasons -- and actually averaged 103 wins a year from 1997-99 -- they were always haunted by the years they didnt win. So they felt the tonnage of those losses in every one of those Octobers.There are so many things that I think change the destiny of a ballclub, based on the end result, Smoltz said. And in 1996, when we were up, two games to none, against the Yankees, we were going to win our second consecutive World Series. If we do, theres no way John Schuerholz trades David Justice or Jermaine Dye. Theres no way he trades Marquis Grissom. You dont change a team that won. But because we lost and the Yankees won, they went on to spit out four out of five. And that, to me, was the hardest thing for us to take, was that we were in position to win a championship back-to-back. And who knows what could have been for us.Smoltz still believes that if the Braves had just won that World Series, they would have gone on to be the team of the 90s, not the Yankees. They would have kept that team together. They never would have had to play those future postseasons under the omnipresent cloud of Team That Cant Win the Big One. So who knows how many more times they would have won?That team won 100 games in six different seasons -- and won the World Series in none of those years. But how minuscule for those Braves was the line between dynasty and disaster? Lets reflect on that too.One pitch, one bounce, one call, one playSuppose Mark Wohlers had never hung that fateful slider to Leyritz in 1996? Suppose, for that matter, Dye hadnt gotten tangled up with the right-field umpire, Tim Welke, in a bizarre play in the same game, as the Yankees were blowing a 6-0 lead? Suppose theyd won Game 4 and led that World Series three games to one, instead of being tied 2-2?How different might everything have been -- because of one pitch or one crazy moment that no one has witnessed before or since? We cant answer those questions, of course. But go back and take a look at every postseason in this era. There is always a pitch, a play, an umpires call or a ball that bounces the right (wrong) way -- and alters the fate of teams, players and the fans who care much too deeply about them.Everyone we talked to for this piece had a story like that -- a moment they cant forget, one which would have turned games and postseasons and careers upside-down.Never put a percentage on how much luck is in a baseball game, Manuel said. And human nature plays a role.As the Red Sox were coming back after losing the first three games to the Yankees in 2004, there were so many tiny little twists of fate that made it all possible. And not just Dave Roberts stealing second and making it by 1/16 of an inch. Torre can still see a Tony Clark double that would have given the Yankees the lead in the ninth inning of Game 5 -- if it hadnt bounced into the seats in Fenway as no other ball has hopped before or since.Manuel still shakes his head over that squirrel in St. Louis in 2008. And a wild Bartolo Colon pickoff throw against the Mariners in 2001 that was supposed to be a bluff. And an unlikely game-winning 2010 home run by Juan Uribe -- off a Ryan Madson slider that missed its target by a foot.Giants bench coach Ron Wotus said he is still haunted by the agonizing out call on J.T. Snows slide at the plate -- and by a fly ball Jose Cruz Jr. didnt catch -- in the 2003 loss to the Marlins that ended the Giants only 100-win season in the past two decades.In baseball, more than any other sport, those October oddities youve never seen before are often the reason that so many underdogs win and so many 100-win teams go fishing. But we never seem to account for that.Winning is very fleeting, Wotus said. And Im speaking from experience, from the three World Series we won too. Its the bounce of the ball. Its a bloop hit. Its something strange -- one player having a tremendous night. Its so fleeting that ... everyones goal is to win the World Series, but its always something strange like that, that seems to knock you out of that.October isnt fairWhat it all comes down to, really, is that postseason baseball is a whole different sport. So the qualities that make teams great from April through September arent the qualities that decide who wins in October. And is there any greater example than what weve already witnessed in October 2016?Its a totally different season, Smoltz said. You might as well just play baseball totally different. I get the complexities with some of it. But there are too many off days. And you dont utilize your roster the way you would in 162 games. You would never be able to pitch your closer three innings and come back the next day and even think about using him.Would the Indians be in the World Series if they hadnt been able to use Andrew Miller to make six multi-inning bullpen appearances, totaling 171 pitches, in the same postseason? Would the Dodgers still be playing if Kenley Jansen hadnt shown up on the mound at the start of the seventh inning in Game 5 in Washington? Those answers are no and, well, no.You cant do that in the regular season, Smoltz said. Nor would you. Everybodys claiming now that thats the way it should be, but it cant. You have to approach it differently. ... It would be like the Golden State Warriors abandoning their approach and trying to shoot all 2-pointers in the playoffs. Its just not going to be part of their game plan.But thats just kind of what happens now in baseball. Its a format that you can play totally different than you would in the regular season.Well, that format isnt changing. Not any time soon. And certainly not between now and the start of Game 6 at Wrigley. So no wonder the ingenious architect of these Cubs, Theo Epstein, said that when you build a team, all you can do is construct a roster that you think can get you to October.Yeah, but what happens once you get there?Then, he said, you pray. ' ' '