I have Cub Fear.

I come to you as a card-carrying Candlestick Park Frostbite Victim Giants Fan to admit that as the playoffs begin ... I have Cub Fear.

If I were a Brave Fan, I'd have a serious dose of Cub Fear. The Giants won't face the Cubs until the NLCS. The Braves have to deal with Cub Fear now, in the NLDS.

	Dusty Baker has brought great energy to the Cubs this season.

(Then again, who's really a Braves Fan? They get, like, 15,000 of the most apathetic Atlantans they can find to watch playoff games at Turner Field. Atlanta: One of the worst sports towns in America. But that's another column, for another day.)

Back to Cub Fear: Perhaps the most unusual two words in the history of baseball.

Admitting Cub Fear any other year would be laughable, on par with a Democratic presidential candidate owning up to Al Sharpton Fear, or a Hollywood actor hoping for an Oscar nomination revealing he has Keanu Reeves Fear.

But there is a storm of destiny brewing in the Second City, and if your National League team has to get past the Cubs, you are fearing it all: The sight of Sammy Sosa turning on a fastball, the knee-buckling curveball from Kerry Wood, the audio replay of Ozzy Osbourne singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Most of all, you fear Dusty.

It was ex-Giant Rod Beck who coined the term "Dustiny" when Dusty Baker managed the Giants.

Yes, Rodney Roy Beck -- a Cub legend who saved 51 games in 1998, his first year at Wrigley.

That happened to be the last year the Cubs made the playoffs, beating the Giants in a one-game playoff for the wild card -- a Giants team managed by Dusty Baker.

Do you not see the baseball gods at work here?

I have Cub Fear mostly because I know the Power of Dusty, a manager who exudes more magic than a voodoo man in a Caribbean cave.

Dusty's got more charisma than a 1980 Ronald Reagan (the "shining city on a hill" Reagan, not the Iran-Contra Reagan), and more charisma than a 1992 Bill Clinton (the Fleetwood Mac "Don't Stop" Clinton, not the "depends on what the meaning of the word is, is" Clinton.)

	Chew on this: for team spirit.

Cub Fan, you are in good hands.

I expect you all to show up at Wrigley in October, chomping on toothpicks en masse.

Good karma.

Plus, it gets the most stubborn pieces of bratwurst out of your back molars.

I read the Chicago papers online over the weekend, and could see the Perfect Cub Storm building.

Dusty has made these guys believe. Belief is a commodity in short supply in Chicago the last, oh, say, 95 years. Belief in the Cubs has always proved as ephemeral as a springtime sunny spell off the shores of Lake Michigan.

You choose to believe ... and a wind chill of 25 degrees is always just a day away.

It was Eric Karros, a new Cub, who said that Dusty had told the Cubs, and I paraphrase, "you have to respect history, but it has no bearing on what we do this year."

Winston Churchill in a Cub warm-up jacket.

Dusty also told the city of Chicago back in November, when the grim winter was coming and the Cubs were two months removed from 95 losses, "Why not us?"

Holy mother of Ernie Banks: Dusty Baker in a Cub uni is a beautiful blend of George S. Patton and Tony Robbins, minus Patton's megalomania and minus Robbins', well, megalomania.

There is plenty of evidence that Cubbie Magic is in the offing.