Hi, Everyone,

There are some combinations of words, as George Carlin once noted, that are never spoken. Things like “Hand me that piano,” for instance. Or “I brake for zucchini.” Or maybe “No thanks, Monica; I’m a married man.” But these impossible utterances pale beside the words that no one in Chicago has ever really believed (despite moments of intense and unaccustomed hopefulness) would be spoken in our lifetimes: “The Cubs win the pennant!”

The 2003 National League Champion Chicago Cubs. Let’s be honest: that would have taken a bit of getting used to. When they still seemed to be the inevitable winners, I read pundits who said things about falling temperatures in hell or an impending plague of flying pigs, and I, like pretty much every Chicagoan who has even a passing familiarity with the game that calls itself (in a self-congratulatory tone) “our national pastime,” completely understand the sentiment. The Cubs? Champions? This is unheard of. It is impossible. It defies everything we have ever believed. They have not won a pennant since 1945, when the rest of the league was depleted by WWII. And a World Series? Come on! As pretty much everyone knows by now, you have to go back to 1908.

And then there was the intriguing possibility that the Boston Red Sox (last championship: 1918 over--guess who?--the Cubs) should be their World Series opponent! The best line I heard about that matchup was that it would go to seven games and be tied at the end of nine innings in the final game, at which time the world would end. Of course, I guess the world is safe now, at least until Dubya decides to invade someone else.

I grew up in New England. In that region of this country, except for a small patch at the bottom of Connecticut (which true New Englanders understand is actually the sixth borough of New York City), birth certificates have a line that certifies that the child will be a lifelong Red Sox fan (and Yankee hater, which goes with the package). You are required by law to root, root, root for the Red Sox, even when they fail to win a World Series by having a routine ground ball that should be the last out roll weirdly between the legs of a Gold Glove first baseman. (Not that a thing like that would ever happen.) This is the team that sold Babe Ruth, for crying out loud. And the Cubs think the Lou Brock trade was bad! Still, like Chicago’s lovable losers, the Red Sox have some of the most intensely loyal fans in the country. If you fail to live up to your duty to love the Sox, they kick you out of the region. Like Cubs fans, Red Sox fans are “long-suffering.” They’ve waited a heck of a long time for a World Series victory. So, naturally, it should have ended up Cubs/Red Sox, just so that one of these groups of very deserving fans could be disappointed…again.

I’m a fair-weather sports fan and happy to admit it. I love to watch baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and even football when a team from New England, Chicago or Northwestern (well, NU football or basketball anyway) happens to be winning, which pretty much means that I rarely have to worry about paying attention to sports. It saves me a lot of time and energy which I can expend on other things, like catching up on the first season of “24.” This fall, though, I’ve had no time to do much of anything else: there was simply too much baseball! I just couldn’t stop watching! It was an addiction (not unlike, it occurs to me, being a fan of one of these teams in the first place).

I should point out that I think baseball is probably the most boring team sport ever developed in the civilized world (if you don’t count any sport ever created in Britain, which corners the market on stupid sports). In baseball, the game is 99% dead time spent waiting for something to happen. There’s so much empty time in a baseball game that, more than in any other sport, baseball revels in arcane statistics. (What’s the National League Championship Series record for most RBI’s batting lefty by a switch-hitting second baseman in day games started by a pitcher whose first initial is S? Just wait: one of those motor mouth announcers will surely tell you.) But what it lacks in action it makes up in tension. When a game is tight, baseball is about as nail-biting as any sport can be. One pitch—any pitch—might change the game, and everyone knows it. I was at the Cubby Bear during Game 6. The place was jammed with hundreds of fans cheering with each pitch as if we were actually at the ball park. But then there were those fans (yes, it was more than the one guy) reaching out to catch a foul ball that was about to drop into the glove of Moises Alou , and the world started to collapse. You could just sense it happening. And when a Gold Glove quality shortstop bobbled a routine double play ball…

Can you say déjà vu?

Much was said about the poor health of the “number one Cubs fan,” Ron Santo, who missed the most important games in the history of the franchise due to complications of diabetes. Others, from Harry Carey to Jack Brickhouse and many others who have lived and breathed Cubbie blue with nary a title to show for it, have passed on without seeing a championship. One such mega-fan of the “long-suffering” variety was a Chicago folk singer named Steve Goodman, whose “Co, Cubs, Go” is still pretty much the official team fight song. Goodman died of cancer in the mid 1980’s, without (of course) witnessing a Cubs championship, but he was one of the most prominent and vocal Cub fans when he was alive. Still, he understood that this team was more about losing than winning. When he sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame, he switched the lyrics to "It's root, root, root, for the Cubbies. If they don't win, what else is new?"

But “Go, Cubs, Go” is not the epitome of his Cub compositions. No, that honor has to go to one of his most memorable pieces, a song that honored not the men in blue but the people who kept coming to the ballpark year after year to support them despite the fact that they simply never, ever won. That song was called “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” and I’m reprinting the lyrics here:

By the shore's of old Lake Michigan
Where the "hawk wind" blows so cold
An old Cub fan lay dying
In his midnight hour that tolled
Round his bed, his friends had all gathered
They knew his time was short
And on his head they put this bright blue cap
From his all-time favorite sport
He told them, "its late and its getting dark in here"
And I know its time to go
But before I leave the line-up
Boys, there's just one thing I'd like to know

Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around
When the snow melts away,
Do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy covered burial ground
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy
But now they only bring fatigue
To the home of the brave
The land of the free
And the doormat of the National League

Told his friends "You know the law of averages says:
Anything will happen that can."
That's what it says.
"But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan"
The Cubs made me a criminal
Sent me down a wayward path
They stole my youth from me
(that's the truth)
I'd forsake my teacher's
To go sit in the bleachers
In flagrant truancy

and then one thing led to another
and soon I'd discovered alcohol, gambling, dope
football, hockey, lacrosse, tennis
But what do you expect,
When you raise up a young boys hopes
And then just crush 'em like so many paper beer cups.

Year after year after year
after year, after year, after year, after year, after year
'Til those hopes are just so much popcorn
for the pigeons beneath the 'EL' tracks to eat
He said "You know I'll never see Wrigley Field, anymore
before my eternal rest
So if you have your pencils and your score cards ready,
and I'll read you my last request
He said, "Give me a double header funeral in Wrigley Field
On some sunny weekend day (no lights)
Have the organ play the National Anthem
and then a little "na, na, na, na, hey hey, hey, Goodbye"
Make six bullpen pitchers, carry my coffin
and six ground keepers clear my path
Have the umpires bark me out at every base
In all their holy wrath
Its a beautiful day for a funeral, Hey Ernie lets play two!
Somebody go get Jack Brickhouse to come back,
and conduct just one more interview
Have the Cubbies run right out into the middle of the field,
Have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly
Give everybody two bags of peanuts and a frosty malt
And I'll be ready to die

Build a big fire on home plate out of your Louisville Sluggers baseball bats,
And toss my coffin in
Let my ashes blow in a beautiful snow
From the prevailing 30 mile an hour south west wind
When my last remains go flying over the left field wall
Will bid the bleacher bums adieu
And I will come to my final resting place, out on Waveland Avenue

The dying man's friends told him to cut it out
They said stop it that's an awful shame
He whispered, "Don't Cry, we'll meet by and by near the Heavenly Hall of Fame
He said, "I've got season's tickets to watch the Angels now,
So its just what I'm going to do
He said, "but you the living, you're stuck here with the Cubs,
So its me that feels sorry for you!

And he said, "Ahh Play, play that lonesome losers tune,
That's the one I like the best
And he closed his eyes, and slipped away
What we got is the Dying Cub Fan's Last Request
And here it is

This summer, baseball was the center of Chicago’s universe. In the end, it amounted to another disappointment like so many before it, but it sure was one wild ride. And this pitching staff is so young and so talented… Hmmm. The National League Champion Chicago Cubs…you know? I can’t wait until next year. J