There was more than just a nip in the air late Sunday morning at Wrigley Field. With temperatures in the 50s, regular folks inside and outside the ballpark zipped up in jackets and the Cubs sitting at 20 games above .500 entering a game against the Nationals, it felt palpably like September — postseason baseball so near, one could all but taste its wafting, intoxicating scent.
Right?
‘‘Is that a football question or a baseball question?’’ Cubs manager Craig Counsell said, more deadpan than dismissive.
‘‘I mean, look,’’ he went on, ‘‘we’re at three weeks [left] for the regular season. The baseball season, we all know, is a marathon, the ultimate kind of regular-season test. I think this point of the season is a little bit of a trap. You’re close, but 20 games is also a lot of results. The best thing that you try to do is just keep your eye on the day-to-day, not get caught up in forward thinking.’’
The ‘‘trap’’ comment rang especially true, given what had unfolded the night before in Baltimore. That’s where the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto lost a no-hitter on a solo home run with two outs in the ninth inning, left the game with a 3-1 lead, then watched reliever Blake Treinen blow it from there in an astonishing loss that dropped the team’s division lead over the Padres to one game.
Counsell sees what we all see, which is that only an all-time collapse could keep the Cubs, on pace for 90 victories, from reaching the playoffs. Still, he’s being careful not to sound overconfident. Perhaps a better way to put it is he sees no value in it.
‘‘Don’t frame that like I think we’re locks,’’ he said that morning at Wrigley.
And what happened in the ninth inning a few hours later? Cubs closer Daniel Palencia took the mound with a 3-1 lead, faced five batters and failed to retire a single one of them. The Nats won 6-3. Worse yet, Palencia got hurt, landing on the injured list and leaving his team gut-punched and facing further late-inning trouble down the stretch.
Just like that, a semi-rosy picture turned bleak. A whiff of postseason baseball to come turned sour.
No Palencia. Right fielder Kyle Tucker, the Cubs’ best hitter, is on the injured list. Breakout star Pete Crow-Armstrong has one homer since July 23 and is hitting less than .200 since the start of August. Slugger Seiya Suzuki has one homer and 10 RBI since July 18. That was reality entering the Cubs’ series finale Wednesday in Atlanta, where merely getting through a game without another hole opening in the bottom of the boat would count as some sort of a victory.
The Cubs are paying Counsell $8 million a year to keep the boat afloat, a duty one supposes he has performed reasonably enough, even if fans don’t seem too keen on him.
Derrek Lee, who was inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame over the weekend with Sammy Sosa, was drafted by the Padres out of high school in 1993 and, at 18 years old, reported for duty with the Maui Stingrays of the former Hawaii Winter Baseball league. The team played in Wailuku, but most of the guys — including Lee and Counsell, who was nearly five years older — lived in the same apartment complex in Kihei.
Guess who dragged Lee out on a boat on an early fishing excursion?
‘‘D-Lee got seasick really badly that day, which was great because he went in the cabin most of that day, and that was a mistake,’’ Counsell said, savoring the memory. ‘‘But we caught some great mahi-mahi. He recovered by the end of the day. We literally cooked the fish we caught that night on a grill outside the apartment complex. . . . That was one of our first interactions.’’
Recalled Lee: ‘‘I guess that’s one of my first professional baseball experiences, with Craig Counsell out on the ocean. Couldn’t wait to get back to shore. But I will say I have not been seasick since, and I’m an avid fisherman now.’’
Score one for a future skipper, then. Counsell continued to look after Lee when both played for the Marlins in 1998 and 1999, Lee’s first two full big-league seasons. Counsell had won a World Series with the team in 1997, racing home with the winning run in Game 7 to beat Cleveland.
‘‘We knew he was going to be a manager,’’ Lee said. ‘‘He’s such a cerebral player, smart guy, and he has that personality to handle the 162. I think very highly of Craig Counsell. And he has two rings as a player. That counts. . . .
‘‘He’s been through it and seen it all — and as a champion. We know this is crunch time [for the Cubs], but we don’t panic.’’
It’s just how it is this time of year. You know, football time. Postseason baseball, too.
