It’s hip right now, to be a Chicago Cubs fan. I’m OK with that.
Thousands of folks who have stumbled into Wrigley Field, bought the hat, pounded a few Old Styles, stopped in at Murphy’s for a post-game bevvy or two, now pronounce themselves a Cubs fan because “their” team is still playing in late October.
Welcome, friend. Please, don’t suffer if Cleveland beats us.
Us Cubs fans? We are the Mother Theresas of baseball fans. We’ve suffered for you already.
It has been 108 years since the Cubs won a World Series. Some context:
The Boston Red Sox Series slump was a paltry 86 years. The New York Rangers? Fifty-four easy seasons between Stanley Cups – a mere half of the ongoing penance served by Cubs fans.
We haven’t even been in a World Series since 1945, and that was a wartime series. Which means everyone’s team was lousy, which fittingly left the Cubs as the most adept lousy team in the National League that season. And they still lost the World Series.
Before we go any further, this is something you should know: Since I was 17, this has been my licence plate:
I know, wrong for almost 35 years now. Funny, eh?
As a guy who makes a living somewhat predicated on making predictions, I’ve always loved the irony in that. And for the record, most seasons that plate has been accurate at least 60 or 70 times a summer.
Every once in a while I am driving along and someone honks. I check my lane and wonder what traffic infraction I have committed now. Then I look up to see some guy driving next me, giving me the thumbs-up with a big smile.
He – it’s always a he – is a Cubs fan. And only that person truly knows the feeling I have this week, with Game 1 of the World Series going on Tuesday.
Full disclosure: As a professional hockey writer, I have become a terrible fan. I don’t have a favorite National Hockey League team, and on the days I would sit in the stands at an Edmonton Oilers game I don’t even know how to cheer like everyone else anymore.
For me, it’s the Cubs. The Loveable Losers. What that says about my personality, well, you’ll have to be the judge of that.
Most of the time, I simply “Try not to suck,” the advice Cubs manager Joe Maddon gave to Javier Baez last year, which has become a Cubs motto.
I’ve known New York Yankees fans. They are no different than the recent glut of New England Patriots fans. It’s easy, because there is seldom any disappointment.
Try cheering for a team whose motto is, “try not to suck.” The bar, of which there are many in Wrigleyville, couldn’t be much lower than that.
I once had a cat. Named it Wrigley. Cute little red guy. It ran away, leaving sadness and disappointment in its wake. True story.
Cubs fans drink disappointment as if it were mother’s milk. We ingest losses the way the Danish do the undrinkable Akvavit, or Latvians the heinous herbal mixture that is Riga Black Balzams. Dejection is the only flavour we know, and we have consumed it for generations, never tasting the fine wine of success.
Us Cubs fans were furious at Steve Bartman, and despondent at what transpired after he got in Moises Alou’s way on that pop foul. Now Cubs fans are regretful at their treatment of Bartman. We’re worried he might be depressed this week.
Are you spotting the theme here?
I wasn’t even a fan yet in 1969 when the Cubs were teaching me what the biggest choke artists in modern-day baseball looked like, coughing up a 9.5 game lead in August over the Amazin’ Mets. Our best player ever – Ernie Banks – was a Cub for 19 seasons and never played a playoff game. He loved the game so, his signature line was, “Let’s play two!” as if being beaten just once a day wasn’t enough.
No wonder he is known as Mr. Cub.
The Cubs were the last team in baseball to install lights at their ballpark, and as such, were the last club to play predominantly day games. I always kind of respected that.
It became a poisonous disadvantage however, as a losing team was set loose upon the bars and restaurants of Chicago each night around suppertime, and the jag they carried into the next day fuelled yet another loss. Early in the 1983 season, with the Cubs prepping for another stunning 71-win campaign, our own manager turned on the few fans who ventured down to Wrigley each afternoon to mock the floundering Cubs.
“Eight per cent of the *&%$#$ world is working! The other 15 per cent come out here,” Lee Elia lashed, in a profanity-laced tirade well worth Google-ing. “The changes that have happened in the Cubs organization are multifold! All right. They don’t show, ‘cause we’re 5-14…”
Alas, belief unsupported by numbers. ‘Twas ever thus.
My mother Ruthe was a Dodgers fan. She used to sit at home with her scorebook and score the Saturday Game of the Week on NBC, she loved the game so much. I grew up pitching ball, and ran a men’s team called the Edmonton Cubs. By Cubs standards, we were pretty good. By everyone else’s standards, we were average.
Ruthe is gone now, but once of my fondest memories came when we travelled on a whim to Montreal to watch the Cubs clinch a pennant. That was 1989, and of course, the dream was dead within 10 days as the Giants smoked Chicago in the NLCS.
But my Mom caught a ball that weekend, and I have it today. It has Mark Grace’s signature on it. And Harry Caray’s.
Here’s hoping my Cubs don’t disappoint this week. Or I might be digging that ball out of the back of my big screen.
