Probably the one place where the Cubs went very wrong this year was regarding the 100 year drought. The strategy the Cubs chose was to try to distance themselves from history or to make it seem as if was irrelevant to the team´s play. I believe that was a sensible mistake. History does weigh down on you. If you had collapses in the past they certainly will influence you in the future, and this even if the collapse was by other players from your organization.

That kind of history does add pressure and what we are seeing now is pretty much a result of it. The Cubs have weaknesses, that is not in doubt, but these are not weakness we are seeing, we are seeing a team that is playing scared and doing things that it had basically not done all year, especially in back to back important games. And perhaps, just perhaps, one contributing factor is trying to minizime or take the importance off something that is definitely huge. Maybe if they acknoweledged that the 100 year drought and the past failures do indeed add pressure to the players and creates a more difficult atmosphere, maybe that way they would have been able to really take some pressure off. The route they chose probably ended up having the exact opposite effect.

Anyway, that´s my opinion and if you don´t like it (I´m sorry to say) I don´t have others :P