Deep down, we all know it’s a tease. Over the years we’ve learned that nothing with the Cubs is ever as good as it seems and nothing is ever as bad…it’s usually worse. The season was cruising along like most in our lifetimes (no matter how old we are–that’s the great thing about the Cubs, it’s a shared experience–of mouthfuls of shit.), then Carlos punched Mikey, Lou threw a hissy fit and the Cubs started to win.

A sensible person doesn’t really believe that Lou burying an umpire to his ankles really turned the Cubs into the best team in the Major Leagues, even if the record since that day says otherwise.

But strange things continue to happen to this team. Most of them have happened since Michael Barrett was sent to throw his monkey(brain) wrench into the Padres’ season (intrepid reader TJ Brown points out that the Padres are now 2-10 when Michael Barrett starts this year–they are 48-30 when anybody else takes the first squat.)

But even for the most hard bitten Cubs fan, the past few weeks have been the stuff that forces you to believe. Even against your better judgement.

It all started with the suicide squeeze on that Saturday at US Comiskular. The Cubs are the team who loses on that play, not the one who wins with it.

Then the insane game against the Rockies when the Cubs blew a five run lead in the ninth and still came back to win.

Then, the one we’ll remember forever if this turns into a championship season, when the bullpen turned a 5-0 second inning deficit into a chance for E-ramis to walk off with a two run shot and a 6-5 win against the Brewers.

Yesterday, the Cubs found themselves down 5-0 in the second, again. And the potent home run trio of Ryan Theriot, Angel Pagan and Derrek Lee (combined homers going into yesterday’s game–10.) All went yard in a 7-6 win.

As Vin Scully said of Kirk Gibson’s immortal homer in the 1988 World Series, “In the year of the improbable, the impossible has happened!”

As Ralph Wiggum knows, unpossible is a suitable alternate for impossible.

The Brewers can’t be blamed if they look to the south and wonder when the Cubs will inevitably drop the other shoe, and go from 15-4 in a 19 game span to 4-15.

But every day that it doesn’t happen… Every time that the Cubs slap up another win before the Brewers even take the field… both teams start to believe.

As Red said in Shawshank, “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

It’s true. It’s driven us insane for a long time. It’ll do it again. As much as we dread it. As much as we fear it. We can’t help ourselves. The Cubs are like crack. You hate yourself for wanting more. You tell yourself you’ve kicked the habit. Then you wake up in an alley lying in your own filth in desperate need of a tetanus shot, a rabies vaccine and an AIDS test.

Think about it from the Brewers perspective yesterday. They’ve had a rough go of it. They’d lost 8 of their last 12, the Cubs had clawed five games off their lead in two and a half weeks and the day before their ace pitcher had blown off the tip of a finger on his pitching hand. So in the second inning of their game with Colorado they look at the out of town scoreboard and see that the Astros had put five on the Cubs heading into the bottom of the second. They took a deep breath. They relaxed. Even a bad Astros team isn’t going to blow that. Finally a day when the lead can’t shrink.

Fifteen minutes later the scoreboard updates and it’s 6-5 Cubs.

Oops. Back to sphincter tightening.

And imagine how much extra pressure is on the Brewers because of who is chasing them? This isn’t like getting caught from behind by the Yankees or the Dodgers or even the Cardinals. These are the Cubs. They are America’s punchline. How do you live that down?

Couple that with the greater Wisconsin hatred for all things Chicago, and Illinois. Brewers fans are already complaining that “you ought to be in first, look at your payroll!” That’s right. Harp on that. That kind of thing really zings Cubs fans. That’s like bragging about how highly you scored on your cholesterol test.

Tim Kirkjian of ESPN gets out a few phonebooks, plops them on a chair and climbs up to be on Baseball Tonight and keeps talking about Lou said in spring training that these Cubs were the most talented team he’d ever managed. I still find that hard to believe given that he managed a Mariners’ team that had Ken Griffey Jr, Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson. I think what Lou was trying to say was that beyond the superstars (presumably Soriano, Zambrano, Lee and Ramirez) that the talent was deeper than he had in Seattle. Funny that he’d say that in Mesa, given that he’s completely shuffled the deck since those days.

Nobody had any idea in March that the Cubs would break out the  bon tons roulez double play combination of Theriot and Fontenot, or that Cubs’ fans would grow comfortable with seeing the great Angel Pagan in the lineup from time to time. Nor would anybody have thought that choosing between Ryan Bowen and Koyie Hill might seem actually kind of important.

But what Lou has done with these Cubs is the most astonishing thing. In less than 70 games he turned them into a team that plays the right way, doesn’t do horribly stupid things (at least not often), and who has made themselves hard to beat.

The Cubs aren’t going away. They know it, and the Brewers know it. Milwaukee’s going to have to earn their first trip back to the playoffs in 25 years. A month ago, that didn’t seem to be the case.

That’s not to say that these Cubs won’t kick us in the groin again. We don’t go into this blindly. Some things are beyond even the control of Lou Piniella. But with full knowledge of that, we throw caution to the wind and head once more into the breech dear friends.

We wouldn’t have it any other way.