Is it finally little bear's year?

It was so much easier and less stressful to cheer for them when they were the butt of every baseball joke that didn't involve the Kansas City Royals. Now, ESPN and the media have gone out of their way to make it appear that the MLB season doesn't even need to be played. Let's just hand the Cubs the trophy and move on with our lives. Need I remind them this is the most disappointing franchise in sports history. Time and time again they blow opportunities.

For those that didn't know, I LOVE the Cubs. They are probably my second favorite sports team outside of Nebraska Football, but honestly I would be more excited about a Cubs World Series than a Nebraska national championship simply because of the distance between the last one for each team. The Huskers won the national championship as recently as 1997. The last Cubs World Series? 1908, for those of you counting at home, that is a 108 year gap.

Cubs fans have come up with too many curses to count: the Billy Goat, the black cat, the infamous Steve Bartman. Personally, I don't believe in curses in the traditional sense. I do believe in the crippling effect of believing in a curse and the kind of impact that can have on performance. When that Steve Bartman incident happened in 2005, I knew the Cubs were going to lose that series because all at once everyone at Wrigley had a "here it comes again" face. If you believe you are going to lose, 9 times out of 10 you will lose.

I am so excited and nervous for this season at the same time. I LOVE this team. They are young, fun, hammer the baseball and play as a unit. They have depth. They got a lot of great experience for their young roster in last season's surprise run. They pick each other up. So why be nervous? Because it's the Cubs and for whatever reason, it just never works out. The last time they were given the World Series before the season was over they were swept in the Divisional Round in 2008. A Divisional Round sweep for this team would be inexcusable. You don't add Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist, and John Lackey to a NLCS contender and expect to go backwards.

The season kicked off last night with a 9-0 win over a pretty good Angels team. Their bats were put to sleep by one of the best, if not the best pitcher in baseball right now and the pitching of the Angels just isn't up to par with the depth of the Cubs lineup. Here's to hoping the Cubs don't remember they are the Cubs and believe they can win. I sure do.

Bold Predictions About the Cubs this season...

1) Record: 101-61 (win the NL Central and have the best record in baseball)
2) Jake Arrieta wins 20 games again and takes home his second consecutive Cy Young
3) Kyle Hendricks, not John Lackey, will be the 3rd best starting pitcher on this team
4) Anthony Rizzo will have another 30+HR, 100+RBI season, but will finish 2nd in MVP voting to Bryce Harper. In fact, he may finish 2nd to Bryce Harper for the MVP at some ridiculous rate over the next 10 years. I say it happens 5 times.
5) The Cubs will break the single season Home Run record of 264 by the 1997 Seattle Mariners
6) Jorge Soler's home run total will be double the number of times himself and Javier Baez's names get thrown around as trade bait
7) After a rocky Spring Training, Hector Rondon will save 20 games in a row at some point this season and will have more than 40 saves
8) The Cubs will win the NLCS in a dramatic seven-game series over the even numbered dynamos aka the San Fransisco Giants (the Giants have won the World Series the last three even-numbered years: 2010, 2012, 2014)
9) The Cubs will sweep whoever represents the American League in the World Series
10) My wife and I make it to at least one Cubs game this season