The Chicago Cubs

With the Cubs losing two games yesterday against the Yankees (they have never won in Yankee Stadium) it's time to mention that some of us, who have always liked the Cubs, like them more than ever since the Red Sox have won three recent World Series:  the Cubs have not won a Word Series since 1908 and have not been in one since 1945.  The closest they have come recently was 1984, when baseball voided their home field advantage because they only played day games and there would not be enough TV money and 2003 when the Cubs were ahead of the Florida Marlins 3 games to 2 in the play-offs and Steve Bartman deflected a foul ball with the Cubs only four outs away from the World Series!  Now the Cubs have lights and play about half their home games at night, though I think one of the best theories I have heard about their problem in winning is that the players don't treat the game like a day job and party too much the night before a game. Some people think it goes back to the Curse of the Billy Goat.  In the 1945 World Series tavern owner Billy Sianis brought his goat to a game (the goat had a ticket) and was asked to leave; he placed a curse on the Cubs as he left.

The Cubs play in beautiful Wrigley Field, one of the last of the old ballparks (along with Fenway in Boston) and it has been said that the ever-changing winds in Wrigley prevent fielding a team that is specifically suited for its ball park.  I have been to Wrigley a number of times and it is a beautiful place to see a baseball game, though I did have some of the worst ballpark food there:  ice-cold nachos! Lee Elia was manager of the Cubs in 1983 and denounced the fans:  "85% of the people in this country work.  The other 15% come here and boo our players."  Some think there is a culture of losing with the Chicago Cubs.  Columnist Mike Royko said that if one wished to predict the winner of a particular ball game just count the number of ex-Cubs in the game; the team with the most is the loser. (I have said something similar about the Mets, though the team with the most ex-Mets is likely the winner, since they trade their best players).

There was a delightful piece about the Cubs in the August 2001 Harper's:  Down and Out at Wrigley Field (available to Harper's subscribers), in which Rich Cohen recounted his life as a Cubs fan:  "In my own childhood there were the Reuschel brothers, fat, mustachioed, glasses-wearing screwballers who, to me, looked like the newspaper's photos of John Wayne Gacey."  (I once saw Rick Reuschel hit a triple against the Mets, one of four triples he hit in his career; he was huffing and puffing by the time he got to third base).  He quotes current Yankees manager Joe Girardi, then playing for the Cubs, "when I was in third grade I wrote an essay about how I would play for the Cubs," something Girardi probably remembered as the Yankees shut out the Cubs twice yesterday. Cohen's father tried to get him to root for the Dodgers or the Yankees: "he worried that in cheering for the Cubs I would come to accept losing as the natural condition of things and so ruin my life."

Perhaps one of the reasons the Red Sox have won the World Series recently is because they have a clear-cut rival in the Yankees.  It used to be a little like that with the Mets and the Cubs:  the Cubs were in first place by eight games in Sept. 1969 but eventually yielded to the Mets.  Now both teams are perpetually in the cellar and even in different divisions. I like baseball during the day, when one can see the white ball in the air against the blue sky, so I will continue to like the Cubs, hoping that they will continue to play mostly during the day, though I hold out little hope that they will be allowed to play a day game if they ever do get to the World Series in this century.