What a Difference a Day Makes

After wasting a few paragraphs with pointless trivia (Did you know that the Cubs are off to their best start since 1977? Or, more to the point, do you care?), Sully drops this nugget of joy into his "game" story late Tuesday night:

While the Cubs came into the game ranked third in NL starting pitching with a 3.96 earned-run average, Marquis and Ted Lilly have yet to show the kind of consistency needed to convince anyone the Cubs are truly a championship-caliber team.

That's actually a fair cop, and an unusually insightful piece of commentary from a usually-inane Sully.

Unfortunately, the insight doesn't continue today. Sully reverts to his typical typist fare with this:

Two months into the season, the Cubs are the obvious front-runner for the National League pennant, an unfamiliar position for many of the players.

Gentle Readers, try to wrap your mind around these two statements, posted on the web site of a major metropolitan daily on two consecutive days.

I understand that the unfolding narrative of the season means that team's fortunes will rise and fall. But can a particular team's fortunes rise so fast that on Tuesday it is unable to "convince anyone they are truly a championship-caliber team," while on Wednesday it is the "obvious front-runner for the National League pennant?"

I don't know about you, Gentle Readers, but if I overheard a fellow at my local watering establishment, or at the office water cooler, spout off two wildly divergent opinions about the same team on consecutive days, I'd be inclined to write him off as a kook. Or a disingenuous phony.

Perhaps Major League Baseball follows the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- measuring a team's position in the standing makes its momentum uncertain.