Unfazed Cubs return to their den

It did not smell of desperation in the visiting clubhouse at Chase Field in the wee hours of Friday morning. Actually, it smelled a little like the salmon Cubs players were picking at quietly in a somber postgame meal.

But desperation?

“Definitely not,” Mark DeRosa said of the Cubs’ need to win three straight against the Arizona Diamondbacks, beginning today at Wrigley Field, in the best-of-five National League division series. “We’re more than capable of taking three games from anyone in baseball. I don’t want to say it’s time to push the panic button, because it’s not. But we do we need to play perfect baseball.”

Perfection may not be necessary. But something above a batting average of .179, the Cubs’ cumulative effort in Games 1 and 2, undoubtedly is.

“We’ve been kind of funny all year offensively,” said Derrek Lee, who is two for eight with a walk and four strikeouts. “We can break out for seven runs in an inning real quick, but then we can have a couple of games like this. We’re looking for that breakout we need, but this offense is capable. We have the guys in here who can do it. We just have to get it done.”

While no National League team in the wild-card era has rallied from an 0-2 deficit to win a best-of-five division series, it has happened four times in the American League, including 1995, when Lou Piniella’s Seattle Mariners did it against the Yankees.

And teams rallying from a two-game deficit certainly isn’t unheard of in postseason play, although it’s obviously more common in best-of-seven series.

Lee might want to give his teammates a pep talk based on his experience. He was a member of the 2003 Florida Marlins who came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Cubs in a National League Championship Series that’s memorable for all the wrong reasons in Chicago.

But Lee acknowledges it will not be easy.

“Give them some credit,” he said of the Diamondbacks.

“They play good baseball, they put pressure on us with their speed. We see why they have a good team over there. They play well.

“This isn’t how you print it up when you go into a series, but it is what it is. We’re backed into a corner, so we have to come out fighting.”