When we last left the Chicago Cubs, manager Lou Piniella was walking off the field toward the dugout one last time. It was Oct. 6, 2007. The Cubs' season was over. A fan shouted, "Get 'em next year!" and the manager nodded and replied with a wave: "Yeah. We'll do better."

Fans were pouring stoically out of Wrigley Field toward the gates and some held back their despair, while others saw a storybook emerging.

"We hope every year that we'll come here and it will be different," Robyn Kane said on her way out after the Cubs were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Division Series. "We'll keep doing it, too."

When we last left the Chicago Cubs, Ryan Theriot was getting dressed one last time in the little home clubhouse and saying the kinds of things that have defined his team's players and its fans for generations: "You've got to take a positive out of it. You just have to regroup and come back strong."

Next year is here, but this is not just any next year. This is the next year. This is 2008, the 100th anniversary of the Cubs' last World Series championship. Which leads to the obvious question: Will this be the year that the team with the longest drought of titles in North American professional sports finally wins?

Will Piniella be right? Will they do better? Will Kane be right? Will it be different? Will Theriot and his teammates come back strong? Is there really a Curse of the Billy Goat, and if so, can it be reversed the way Boston reversed its so-called Curse of the Bambino in 2004?

On Monday, the Cubs begin another season. The backdrop this time is a big storyline for many observers around the national pastime, as if something so banal as a round number really can get you into a postseason, much less into a World Series victory parade float.

The number "100" is so -- what is the right word? -- noticeable. A society is conditioned to see it and accept it as significant. Willard Scott and a jelly-maker have been glorifying people 100 years old for a long time. We are a society that rounds off numbers in just about every part of life. So here comes the big 100.

Just look at that letter on the Cubs cap. It's a "C," which is the Roman numeral for 100.