Pirates 9, Cubs 2: A tale of two games

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY SportsBaseball is cyclical.

Players and teams have upswings and downswings, good runs and bad, times when they look invincible, times when they “can’t buy a win,” as WGN-TV’s Jack Brickhouse used to remind us.

And so it is that we all always knew this run of great Cubs baseball would eventually come to an end, likely because key players would depart via trade or free agency.

But not like this. Never in my worst nightmares did I think that the Chicago Cubs, with the current core, with management supposedly devoted to “winning now,” would end a season like this, with a long losing streak in which absolutely nothing they did worked.

I mean, sure, this is the 50th…