RSS
Home
Reevaluating my relationship with the Cubs
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
This is going to be a very difficult thing for me to write, and I hope that you will all stay with me as I try to explain how I’m feeling about my beloved Cubs after they got swept out of the playoffs over the weekend by the Dodgers. It’s hard for me to say, harder still to write, and hardest still to own in my heart, and so my hope is that you will judge me gently on what I am about to say.
Here goes:
I don’t think I can do this anymore. I think I’m done. It’s not you, dear Cubs, it’s me. But I do desperately still want to be friends.
That’s right, I’m breaking up with the Cubs. For good this time. I still love them, it’s just that I’m not in love with them anymore.
And I’m not selling my loyalty on eBay like that pitiful Cubs fan I read about this morning, far from it. But I am adjusting it. Significantly.
For those of you reading this thinking that I’m joking; I assure you, I am not. I am very very serious. I cannot do this anymore.
You know that old saying “screw me once, shame on you…”? Screw me repeatedly for my entire lifetime as fan? Yeah. Shame on me. I get it now. And shame is not a color that looks good on me.
As with any relationship in crisis, there comes a point when you realize that there is only so much you can take. You put up with abuses and letdowns and lies and hurt for as long as you can because you love them, but at some point it just all becomes too much and you know that you cannot possibly continue any longer. That’s what has happened to me and the Cubs this season. I’m sad about it, to be sure. But honestly, it was time.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect my relationship with the Cubs to look very different from the outside. I know we can still be good friends. People will still see us together all the time and they’ll gossip that we’ve gotten back together. Yes, it will seem very much the same.
I will still watch my average of 130-140 games a season and I will still wear my hats and shirts and even my Zambrano jersey from time to time. I still plan on traveling to Wrigley whenever I can and I’ll cheer for them to win and commiserate with them when they lose. They’ll still be my favorite team and I’ll still follow their every move and talk about them way too much. I will even probably still wish that things could have been different. I will still write about them when I can. But. But. I will do this all with the love of a friend but the distance of a broken heart.
In 2003 when the Cubs lost to the Marlins in the NLCS in the Bartman-gate debacle that was the crushing of dreams and the obliteration of all that was good in my world at the time, I was truly, painfully heartbroken. I did not speak to anyone for three days afterwards – not an exaggeration, not a word – and even once the words started to come it took me another few weeks before I could shake the monumentous, oppressive hurt I felt in my heart.
But as terrible as the loss that year was, it was also for me a loss filled with promise. We were a good team and we were thisclose and we would get back there again. I had faith in the existence of another chance another year. Yes, there was “always next year” (or some year). We’d get there eventually. The 2003 season made me hungry for a championship, and I knew then that we would find a way do it.
Then last year, in a 3 game NLDS series against the Diamondbacks that would provide the basis for that week’s feelings of déjà vu, I found hope again. Yes I was mad about their poor showing and disappointed that they couldn’t have made it further in the postseason (and embarrassed, so embarrassed...) but I’d seen glimpses of real promise on 2007’s team, was excited about Piniella leading the way, and thought with a couple of tweaks the Cubs might be really good in 2008. I had hope.
And I was right. In fact, the Cubs weren’t just good this year, they were great. It seemed like the team couldn’t do anything wrong, like they couldn’t lose at times. Jim Hendry went and got the players the team needed to strengthen their lineup and then that roster produced. There was a new hero every day and the whole thing just seemed predestined, didn’t it? Every day a new record was broken and I could all but read the headlines announcing our first World Series win exactly 100 years after the last. I hoped. And more than hope even, I knew. This was it.
I wondered if finally winning would change what it meant to be a Cubs fan. I wondered if we fans would become as obnoxious as Red Sox fans have become since breaking their own losing streak. I pictured what the infamous AC sign would look like with six zeroes and I guessed about the design of the celebratory t-shirts. I considered the possibilities of not only winning it all this year, but of starting a Cubs dynasty for years to come. We were that good. I hoped they would get the Phillies in the NLCS so I might go to a game. I thought a lot about what it was going to feel like when they won. Would I cry? Laugh? Would I want to be alone or amongst people? I couldn’t wait.
And then the calendar turned to October and it all came crashing down upon me, upon us all. Horribly and disastrously and unbelievable in a way I still can’t really explain. I think it’s pretty pointless at this point to even talk about those three losses, not it detail, but I will say that it was ugly. Worse than ugly even. The ugliest. I was embarrassed for them as they lost three in a row and I wondered who this team was and where the 2008 World Series team gone?
I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t watch game 3. I couldn’t. And when I awoke Sunday morning and turned on SportsCenter I knew what to expect. A sweep. The third loss. The series over. The end. But as I watched the scores from Saturday’s games scroll across the bottom of the TV I also still felt the hope of a magical season surge through me and I realized we could still do it. We’d played so well on the road this year. One more win in LA with Lilly pitching and then back to Chicago where we’d put it away in a game when Ryan Dempster would redeem himself and we would celebrate a come-from-behind series win as we waited for the Phillies.
And then when I finally saw the score of what had already been decided hours before and, well, in that moment hope was gone. I felt absolute incredulity and misery all over again. I’m not sure if disappointment is worse than despair but in that moment I felt both. Crushingly.
And so my heartbreak this year is of a different kind. I have no hope. Not for next season, not for the one after. Not ever. If this team, as perfect as they were, if they couldn’t win a World Series, how then will it ever be done?
Also, just so we’re clear, this isn’t a curse. This isn’t about a goat or a cat, a kid inexplicably wearing headphones during game 6 of the NLCS or a lineup incapable of scoring runs. This is about a pressure to succeed after so much failure that is too powerful and too all consuming to be overcome. This is about never wining the World Series again. And this is about me wondering why it took me so long to realize it.
So knowing what I know now about the futility of believing in any Cubs team to win it all again, I have to acknowledge that I just cannot love them anymore in the same blind, selfless, unconditional way that I have in the past. I cannot. Sometimes you have to guard your heart against future heartbreak. You have to. You cannot be hurt over and over and over again without wanting to build some walls around your heart. It happens in love and it happens in baseball. It’s happened to me.
It is with tremendous sadness that I admit that I will never love the Cubs again as I did this year. I have been hurt too much.
Is it a cop out to say that I am reigning in my love after only 27 seasons of loss when so many others have endured lifetimes of sorrow? Maybe. But I suspect that I am not the first Cubs fan to temper his or her devotion in order to hurt a little less. I’m afraid I also won’t be the last.
Maybe we’ll have a great season next year. I think with a few adjustments ( some to the bullpen, Fukudome, moving DeRosa to the outfield permanently, etc.) and some good luck on the injury front we could even be as good as we were this year or perhaps even better. Maybe we’ll even have a chance at the postseason again. Maybe the team will even prove me wrong and win it all. I’ll be thrilled if they do, and surprised, but it will never mean as much to me as it could have. I will have distanced myself too much.
As always though, as always, go Cubbies.
Related Articles:
Comments
.jpg)
