Cubs' postseason run has fallen well short of expectations

CHICAGO -- Well, we got one thing right about the Cubs, anyway.

Two games in, they're the biggest story of the postseason.

Biggest story. Biggest embarrassment. Biggest disappointment.

Two games in, and the 97-win, break-the-curse, team-of-the-century Cubs already have one foot out the door. The way they played in Thursday's 10-3 loss to the Dodgers, you can only figure that they'll trip over that foot on the way out.

You'll hear a lot during the next two days about Joe Torre's 2001 Yankees, the only baseball team to recover after losing the first two games at home in a best-of-5 series. You'll hear plenty about how the Cubs had 14 winning streaks of at least three games, about how they have perhaps their most talented pitcher (Rich Harden) going in Game 3 on Saturday night, and maybe their hottest pitcher (Ted Lilly) ready for a possible Game 4.

All those things are true, but so is this: When you lose like this, at home, to begin a best-of-5 series, history says you're in deep trouble.

Of the 22 best-of-5 series that have begun this way, 15 have ended in sweeps, and only two have gone to a fifth game. Only one, that 2001 Yankees-A's series, ended with the team down 2-0 coming back to win.

So yes, the Cubs are in deep trouble.

Jim Edmonds and the Cubs are running out of chances in this series. (Getty Images)

Give Cubs second baseman Mark DeRosa credit for honesty. He got a talking-to from manager Lou Piniella for saying Game 2 was "pretty much do-or-die" for the Cubs, but he was pretty close to being right.

What we didn't know at the time was how much the Cubs were going to look like a dead team Thursday night, and how big a part in it DeRosa was going to play.

This game was scoreless -- and also errorless -- when Blake DeWitt hit a perfect double-play ball to DeRosa in the second inning. Turn the double play, and the inning's over. Kick it, as DeRosa did, and you open the door to a five-run inning.

"It could have changed the whole complexion of the game if that double play gets turned," the ever-honest DeRosa said. "I put the horns on myself for that play."

So what complexion did the game take after that? Well, DeRosa's error was followed quickly by one by first baseman Derrek Lee. Two innings later, it was third baseman Aramis Ramirez's turn. Sure enough, in the ninth, shortstop Ryan Theriot made an error, too.