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Cubs Return To Postseason Tonight

The hot, young talent. The emerging ace with the electric stuff. The relentlessly upbeat manager. The giddy relief that comes with washing away years of futility.

Yeah, Andrew McCutchen has seen this script before.

 width=Two years ago, it was star center fielder and the rest of the Pittsburgh Pirates who found themselves as baseball's new darlings when they crashed the playoffs for the first time in two decades.

Now it's the Chicago Cubs, whose rebuilding project hit warp speed somewhere between Joe Maddon's hire last winter and rookie slugger Kris Bryant's arrival in April.

The Pirates can change the subject quickly Wednesday night in the NL wild-card game. The winner gets the St. Louis Cardinals in the Division Series starting Friday.

The clubs that combined for 195 wins both believe they can make a run provided they can survive baseball's version of a high-wire coin flip.

Heady territory for two franchises that have spent most of this millennium taking turns at the bottom of the NL Central.

Those days have long since passed in Pittsburgh, making its third straight playoff appearance. The Cubs hope to say the same thing in Chicago regardless of a history filled with curses - from billy goats to black cats to Steve Bartman - and a World Series drought at 107 years and counting.

The weight of failure, however, hardly appears to be wearing on a team so loose Cy Young candidate Jake Arrieta took to Twitter to tweak the Pirates' fan base after a parody account warned him of what was coming at what is sure to be a rowdy PNC Park.

Arrieta tweeted back ''whatever helps keep your hope alive, just know it doesn't matter.''

Arrieta will face a kindred spirit in Pittsburgh starter Gerrit Cole.

Unlike Arrieta, a late bloomer, Cole has been groomed for this stage from the day the Pirates took him with the first overall pick in the 2011 draft. He hasn't missed a beat any step of the way and made the All-Star team for the first time this summer while becoming the first Pittsburgh pitcher to reach 19 victories since 1991.

Both the Pirates and Cubs spent most of the summer stalking but never quite catching the Cardinals. A win provides a second chance.

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