There have been, since the World Series began in 1903, 103 major league postseasons -- no, I haven't miscounted; there was no World Series in 1904, nor a postseason in 1994.

The Cubs and Dodgers, historic franchises, have participated in 35 of those between them. Between them they've been in 26 World Series (ten for the Cubs, 16 for the Dodgers; only the Cardinals, with 13, and the Dodgers, have won more NL pennants than the Cubs since 1900) and nine other postseasons in the divisional play era without making it to the Series (five for the Cubs, four for the Dodgers). But tomorrow marks the first time in the long history of both these teams that they will meet in a postseason game.

I thought, rather than do position by position matchups, which rarely mean anything (seriously: catchers don't do battle with each other on the field), I'd take a look back at the seven games these two teams played against each other during the regular season -- with the caveat that the Dodgers are a very different team now than they were then, having added Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake to their offense. The Cubs won the season series 5-2 by sweeping the Dodgers at home and splitting four games in Los Angeles.

May 26 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

Ryan Dempster [had his] 11th good start of the season. Yes, all 11 -- look at his previous game log and you'll see that although he had a couple of "not-great" starts, he hasn't been blown out of any of them, and has gone six or more innings in 10 of 11. Today, after getting out of a first-inning jam he caused himself by walking the nearly-unwalkable Juan Pierre by a nicely-executed rundown of Pierre trying to score (my friend and BCB reader bison texted me from California, where he had scored it from home 1-6-4-5-2-3-4), Dempster settled down and retired nine of the next ten hitters he faced, finally running into trouble in the fifth when Mark DeRosa couldn't handle an infield popup and had no play as Matt Kemp, who had doubled, scored LA's only run.

Dempster got himself out of another jam in the 6th, after he had loaded the bases with two singles and a walk to Kemp, and again in the 7th, when no one was warming up, a testament to how overworked the bullpen was in all the extra-inning games in Pittsburgh. Dempster threw 117 pitches, 71 for strikes, and Bob Howry had to do the same thing in the 8th. We couldn't figure out why Scott Eyre, warmed and ready, didn't come in to face two lefty hitters in James Loney and Delwyn Young. Lou explained during the news conference that he thought Howry was throwing better, and it appears he wanted to give Howry a confidence-builder.

That's a risky way to win games, but it worked. Howry struck out Loney and got Young to fly to Jim Edmonds (the ball, not too far away from Alfonso Soriano, had us yelling, "Let Edmonds take it!" (We were threatening to ask the Cubs to put those beeping sounds you hear from trucks backing up near the wall so Alfonso would know when he's getting close to it, either that or yellow crime-scene tape.)

Dempster, for his part, continued pitching well all year -- he only had one or two bad starts the entire season.

May 28 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

[Kosuke] Fukudome, who has been in an offensive funk, snapped out of it with the double, a single and a walk, and made a couple of sparkling defensive plays in right field. How anyone could consider hurting the defense by moving him to CF and putting a minor league first baseman in right, I simply cannot understand. It does appear, as I keep saying, that Jim Edmonds is done, done, D-O-N-E (have I said done?). He went 0-for-4 last night, got booed roundly the last two times, and his bat speed is probably about the same as Cubs hitting coach Gerald Perry's would be if Perry took the field now. Edmonds did make one nice catch going back on a fly ball to the warning track; his fielding is still decent and he catches everything he gets to. I still fail to see how this team is helped by his presence.

Last night's performance by Kerry Wood ought to quiet a similar chorus asking for him to be replaced at closer. He looked dominant and seems to be getting more comfortable in the role each time out. Meanwhile, Carlos Marmol had a shaky outing, loading the bases before getting out of the jam. I'd like to see him rest up some, as he's bordering on severe overwork.

Well, obviously, I was wrong about Edmonds that day in May -- he started hitting right after that and has been an exemplary presence on the field and in the clubhouse. His postseason experience -- he has more than anyone else on the club, even Alfonso Soriano -- will be invaluable in October.

May 29 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 2, Dodgers 1:

Before a near-sellout of 39,945 on a night that was, by the end, starting to get cold, the Cubs provided 9th and 10th inning dramatics that had Wrigley Field rocking as I have never heard it for a regular season game this early in the year, and Alfonso Soriano shut up his critics (for a day, at least) by poking a single into left field, scoring Mike Fontenot with the winning run in an excruciatingly exciting 2-1 Cubs win over the Dodgers, completing the Cubs' fourth three-game sweep at home this season, moving their home record to a spectacular 22-8, pushing them 11 games over .500 for the first time since the last day of the ill-fated 2004 season...

Remind me again why the Cubs need another starting pitcher? They allowed an admittedly hurting LA "offense" three runs in this series, and the only one Carlos Zambrano allowed last night was on a bases-loaded walk after he had helped load the bases by hitting Matt Kemp. Z admitted in his postgame comments that he knew he didn't have his best stuff or command; he walked four, tying his season high, and had to get, essentially, five outs in that tense eighth inning because his defense deserted him (Mark DeRosa let a ball go off his glove which was ruled a hit, and Ryan Theriot made a throwing error, both of which could have been outs). Z threw an alarmingly high total of 130 pitches -- something we haven't seen since the Baker era. However, Lou said in his own postgame remarks that he'll keep Z on a short leash in his next start...

It was right after that when Z's shoulder started to bark at him and a little over two weeks later, he had to be taken out of a game at Tampa Bay and wound up on the DL. I think Z is fine now, but the staff will have to watch his pitch count closely. (Yet another reason Bob Howry shouldn't be on the playoff roster.)

Kerry Wood, who some here were ready to throw under the bus when he had a tough debut as closer on Opening Day, is now leading the National League in saves.

Once again, this team won with a different hero; last night it was Kosuke Fukudome, who hit his first MLB home run away from Wrigley Field and who drove in the winning run with e perfectly-placed single off his countryman Takashi Saito in the 9th inning.

The Cubs blew an early 4-0 lead when Jeff Kent homered twice, once off Ryan Dempster, once off Bob Howry, who nearly did a Ted Lilly slam-the-glove-down move, rare for him -- you almost never see Howry show emotion on the mound -- but this resilient team came back. Props to Neal Cotts for throwing a scoreless inning -- so far, since his recall, Cotts looks more like the setup man who had a 1.94 ERA for the 2005 champion White Sox, than the guy who got sent down seemingly never to return last year.

Kent won't be playing in this series (and we hope, neither will Howry), and it would be great if Fukudome could get out of his two-month offensive funk and contribute in this series.

June 6 at Dodger Stadium -- Dodgers 3, Cubs 0:

... they just got beat last night when they got shut down by a pretty good pitcher. That kind of stuff happens even to great teams (example: the 114-win 1998 Yankees got shut out five times, including by scores of 7-0, 9-0 and 11-0. This makes three for the 2008 Cubs). [Hiroki] Kuroda not only held the Cubs to four harmless singles, he also struck out eleven and didn't walk anyone.

I posted a long diatribe about Ryan Theriot's lack of range in that recap; obviously, we're long past the time when any change is going to be made (especially with Ronny Cedeno now with a balky shoulder because of the dumb dive he made into 1B in NY last week). Theriot's the SS, for good or bad, for the duration. We can only hope that Kuroda's more hittable in game three than he was that night in June.

Carlos Zambrano actually threw six good innings; unfortunately, his defense deserted him in the seventh, with Aramis Ramirez charged with one error and Kosuke Fukudome dropping a catchable fly ball (the latter would have ended the seventh inning with the score only 4-3 Dodgers). You simply can't give a major league team five outs in any inning and expect to win.

All of this was after the Cubs had fashioned leads of 2-0 and 3-2 against the tough Derek Lowe, and even though Z had given up a ton of hits, he had gotten out of every jam up to the point where Russell Martin homered to tie the game at 2. In fact, all three homers hit today -- Martin's, Alfonso Soriano's, and the killer three-run blast from Matt Kemp that put the game away -- didn't seem as if they were going to go out when they first left the bat. All seemed routine fly balls that wound up carrying; Dodger Stadium seems more conducive to that during the day than at night.

And those defensive lapses were the story of the game; otherwise Z and Lowe matched up pretty well, and once the game was out of hand, Neal Cotts threw an inning and a third without allowing anything else, saving the rest of the bullpen for tomorrow.

So -- the Cubs could have defeated Derek Lowe (who is 2-1, 3.25 in eight career starts vs. the Cubs) if they'd have played a more solid defensive game, and note that the Dodger homers were hit during a day game, when the ball carries better than at night; all the games in the division series are likely to be night games (the first three definitely are).

Apart from Geovany Soto's throwing error on Juan Pierre's first-inning steal, which allowed Pierre to go to third and score on an infield out, the Cubs were nearly flawless in front of the national audience. Jason Marquis -- see, I knew he had this kind of talent, as Mark DeRosa said:

"I think sometimes he becomes his own worst enemy," DeRosa said. "He sometimes doesn't realize how great his stuff is. When he's on, he's tough to hit. He has a good sinker, he had good command of his slider and his split. He's a good pitcher. He's been a good pitcher in this league."

Exactly. Marquis threw strikes last night and had terrific movement on his pitches. If he hadn't run into trouble in the 7th inning, Lou might have let him finish, as he had thrown only 89 pitches when he was removed, but taking him out in favor of Carlos Marmol was the right thing to do.

Marquis probably won't pitch -- much -- in this series, but it's nice to know that he has this terrific outing, one of his best of the year, to think about if he winds up going against the Dodgers. LA, in fact, is one of his favorite opponents; in 9 career appearances against them (8 starts) he's 3-1, 1.99 in 54.1 innings.

So there you have it. For the Dodger fan's point of view please check out our SBN Dodgers site True Blue LA, and I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Rob McMillin's site that covers both the Dodgers and Angels, 6-4-2. (And Rob's wife Helen is a Cubs fan and occasional BCB poster.) In case you haven't already looked up my 2008 preseason predictions, there's the link; usually it's pretty embarrassing, but only half so this year. I nailed the NL playoff teams, all four of them. (Not so much for the AL, but at least I'm in good company; hardly anyone would have picked the Rays, White Sox or Twins back in March). I'll stand by my NL predictions for the postseason, too: the Cubs to win this series 3-1, and the Brewers over the Phillies, setting up what ought to be a terrific NLCS.

Back in July I posted this contest which asked you to pick the number of wins the Cubs would have, with Ryan Theriot's BA and OBA as tiebreakers.

The prize is a $50 gift card from Distant Replays, a store in suburban Atlanta that sells retro sports gear -- check out their website for examples of what they sell.

The Cubs won 97 games. Theriot hit .307 and his OBA was .387. If someone would volunteer to go through all the posts in the contest link above and let me know who the winner is, I'll make sure he (or she) gets the gift card.

Before we move on to the Division Series against the Dodgers -- and I'll have some thoughts on that posted either later today or tomorrow -- I thought it would be nice to take a deep breath, a few steps back, and think again about this remarkable baseball season we have just experienced.

I've renamed the box on the right sidebar that contains the Cubs' record in their best seasons, that I've maintained on a daily basis since May, "Most Cub Wins In A Season". In the entire 133-season history of the Chicago National League Ball Club, this year's 97-victory bunch won more than all but eight of the previous editions. Of those eight, seven of them won pennants and the other one, the 1909 team, won 104 games and finished second (and likely would have also won the pennant, which would have given them five straight pennants, if Johnny Kling, their fine catcher, hadn't stayed home in Kansas City all year in a contract dispute). There is no doubt that this is the best Cub team in decades, likely since the 1935 Cubs won 100.

The 2008 Cubs led the NL in runs, and by a substantial margin: 855 runs scored; the next-best teams, the Mets and Phillies, tied at 799. They led the league in doubles, walks, OBA and SLG. They finished tied for second (with the Brewers) in ERA, and second to the Dodgers -- and this will likely come into play starting Wednesday -- in fewest runs allowed. They lost six in a row once, and apart from that the longest losing streak of the season was four. They had winning streaks of nine, seven, six and three five-game streaks. Their mission now is to win eleven of the next nineteen.

We all have our memories of our favorite games, performances and players this season. Personally, I love this team. There isn't a single player on the 2008 Cubs that I dislike -- although I'd prefer that Bob Howry not make the postseason roster, I think he's a standup guy who's doing the best he can, it's just not good enough. So to end this brief review, a few notes on how pre-season (or pre-POSTseason, if you are inclined to do so) analysis or looking at early-season performance isn't necessarily the way things are going to turn out.

• When the Mets traded for Johan Santana, many in the mass media ceded the NL East, the playoffs and the World Series to the Mets. I asked, "Yeah, Johan and who else?" Santana did have a fine year for the Mets; he won 16 games and led the league in ERA. But despite his clutch shutout on the season's penultimate day, the Mets will be watching the playoffs on TV for the second year in a row.
• When the Diamondbacks started the season 21-9, many of you here were worried that "those great pitchers" would once again shut down the Cubs in the postseason. I said, "They're not that good." They weren't. Despite picking up Adam "Me See Ball, Me Hit Ball Long Way" Dunn, the D'backs finished ninth in the league in runs scored and had to sweep their final series vs. the Rockies just to finish over .500.
• When the Tigers started 0-7, I pointed out here that no team that had started that badly had ever made the postseason. I said, "They're done." Many of you disagreed. Turns out, they were done. They managed to squeak to three games over .500 on July 23 (55-52) and to within 5 games of first place, but have gone 19-35 from that day to today, when they will visit the Cell to try to deny the White Sox a tiebreaker game tomorrow with the Twins. You can bet Freddy Garcia is going to want to beat his former team and Ozzie Guillen, his close friend.

Speaking of the makeup game today, it is the first such game played since 1973. I posted this in the recap thread from Saturday's game; if you missed it, here are the circumstances surrounding the 1973 Padres/Pirates makeup game, courtesy of Mike Emeigh of SABR:

In 1973, the Mets were 81-79, the Cardinals were 81-81, and the Pirates were 80-81. The Mets had two rainouts with the Cubs to be replayed at Wrigley Field, while the Pirates had a single game to make up with San Diego. Had the Mets lost both games and the Pirates won their game, there would have been a three-cornered tie for the NL East title. As it turned out, the Mets defeated the Cubs in the first game of the scheduled doubleheader to clinch the division, while the Pirates were losing to the Padres. The scheduled second game of the Wrigley Field DH, being no longer necessary, was cancelled.

To expand a little on that, the two Mets/Cubs games were rainouts that had occurred on the season's final weekend, when the weather in Chicago was dreary and cold, but the Mets were already in town. The Pirates/Padres game had been rained out in April, and San Diego had to make a special one-day trip to Pittsburgh, much as the Tigers have to do today. The 1973 Padres were a terrible team; they lost 102 games, but their win that day helped to deny the Pirates a shot at a tiebreaker.

This has been a fascinating and joyful baseball season, filled with marvels. May those marvels thrill us as Cubs fans for four more weeks.

Since I've spent a lot of time making fun of ol' Les on this site, I wanted to acknowledge that, after 11 minor league seasons in which he made 221 appearances (71-63, 4.05 ERA) and 22 major league appearances with the Royals, Cubs and Phillies before today, Les Walrond got his first major league win in the Phillies' 8-3 win over the Nationals today.

Philly starter Kyle Kendrick was pulled after four innings, so he couldn't qualify for the win, and Les came in and threw two shutout innings with four strikeouts, and was awarded the victory.

Congratulations, Les. (But your career major league ERA is still 7.07, so don't get too excited.

Here is mlb.com's schedule page.

Here is TBS.com's schedule page.

If you keep refreshing those pages you'll eventually get the starting times. Let's keep the discussion about game times here.

I have only one word to say about today's game:

What on Earth is Bob Howry doing on a major league roster, much less a playoff roster?

OK, that's 17 words, but you get my point. Ryan Braun smacked a game-winning homer in the 8th inning off Howry and the Brewers beat the Cubs 3-1, and when the Marlins beat the Mets 4-2, the Mets were eliminated and the Brewers won the NL Wild Card, sending the Cubs into a first-ever postseason matchup with the Dodgers.

Bob Howry. What is Lou thinking? Howry has allowed 13 home runs in 70.2 innings -- a horrendous ratio for a relief pitcher (comparison point: in 66.1 innings, Kerry Wood allowed three home runs all season). It was the first homer, granted, that he had allowed since August 14 in Atlanta, when he came into a game the Cubs were leading 11-4 and made it close enough that Wood had to come into a non-save situation in the 9th inning.

The Cubs, obviously, didn't play today's game like a regular game -- it was more like the first day of spring training, where no pitcher goes more than two innings. And until Howry, everyone else threw pretty well, except Sean Marshall, who was charged with the tying run when Michael Wuertz, who also didn't throw very well, issued two walks, one with the bases loaded. And now, Mr. Wuertz, you know why you spent most of your summer in Des Moines.

The Cubs did have a shot at tying the game of CC Sabathia in the 9th -- I had just said, to the TV (no one else was here watching with me!), "Say, maybe Theriot should take off for second", thinking Derrek Lee was a DP candidate. Sure enough, he grounded to second, starting a game-ending double play, his 27th of the season, ending the regular season by tying Ron Santo's team record, which had stood since 1973. Maybe a runner on 2nd would have put Salomon Torres into the game, and the Cubs have hit Torres very hard this month.

The bottom line was, the Brewers needed the game more than the Cubs did, and this doesn't reflect what might happen, a couple of weeks down the road, when the Cubs and Brewers could meet in the NLCS. Actually, I'd look forward to that -- it would be a heck of a series.

But first, there are Dodgers to defeat; I'll have more to say about that before Wednesday. Since the TV moguls were probably waiting to see if their crews had to wait to head to LA or NY for the Cub series games 3 (and 4, if necessary), now that the NL matchups are set, game times should follow in short order (it shouldn't really matter to them whether the White Sox or Twins go to Tampa, for game time purposes, and that won't be known till at least tomorrow).

In the meantime, enjoy a couple of days off. We all need them, I think. (And Lou, you still have time to put someone else -- Gaudin, Wuertz, ANYONE -- on the postseason roster instead of Howry.)

"I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day and I dream about it at night. The only time I don't think about it is when I'm playing it." -- Carl Yastrzemski

"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is." -- Bob Feller