City of big expectations: it's time for Chicago to love a winner; the Cubs are about to become perennial pennant contenders.(Baseball Playoffs)

The lovable losers are dead. Dusty Baker killed them.

Baker is a larger-than-life presence on a team that too often has come up small. Players rave about him; ex-players rave about him; general manager Jim Hendry raves about him.

Before outfielder Doug Glanville came to the Cubs, he often had heard Baker's name mentioned when players discussed which managers they would like to play for. When he arrived in Chicago this summer, Glanville found out how Baker got his reputation.

"Everything he said was true," Glanville says. "It's easy to follow a guy like that."

In his first season in Chicago, and one year after taking the Giants to Game 7 of the World Series, Baker has the Cubs fighting and scrapping and powering in a way the Windy City hasn't seen in generations. The team took a 3-2 lead over the Marlins in the National League Championship Series by getting big hit after big hit and big out after big out while making few mistakes--all hallmarks of a fundamentally sound team.

Baker gives players a long leash and employs a soft touch. Two off-the-field examples from the NLCS stand out. He let outfielder Moises Alou leave the team on a day off to attend his son's birthday party in the Dominican Republic. In a subtler move, Baker made sure Carlos Zambrano didn't get lost and the hoopla surrounding the team's ace pitchers.

With all the talk about Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, Baker made it clear the team had more than a two-man rotation. That reinforcement did wonders for the emotional Zambrano's confidence. Zambrano was the losing pitcher in Game 5, but it was by far his best postseason performance.