Isn’t “madness” defined as doing the same thing over and over while each time expecting a different result? Someone should tell this to Cubs fans.
Each baseball season I’m astounded by the sight of untold numbers of people who fall into a predictable line to shower their love — and money — all over the hapless Chicago Cubs. No matter what the Cubs did the year before, Wrigley Field draws the faithful by the thousands game after game after game.
What sort of squad would the Cubs organization have to field to finally repel its legions of fans? Do these people have a discernible threshold of pain? Certainly, proffering a team whose history doesn’t even rise to the level of mediocrity hasn’t doused their devotion.
Those of us who are White Sox fans, by contrast, employ a carrot-and-stick approach. When the team does well, we’re happy to fill the stands. But when the team does poorly, many seats remain empty.
Garbage in, garbage out. If the Sox organization wants to roll around in dough, fine. Put something on the field that’s worth cheering. Otherwise, forget it.
A former co-worker berated Sox fans in 2003 for our fickleness about attending home games. True sports fans come to the games whatever is happening on the field, he said.
That year he saw his beloved Cubs come within a few outs of making it to the World Series — but then came the Bartman Ball and the collapse of the dream. Two seasons later, I took great delight in watching the Sox parade through downtown Chicago with their World Series trophy. Ah, it’s wonderful being proved right.
But Cubs fans still don’t get it. Among professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey teams in the United States, no squad has a longer streak of not winning a championship than do the Cubs. So that makes the Cubs not merely the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, they’re the worst team in the history of American sports. Now that’s an accomplishment!
So the rabid commitment that fans have for the Cubs is very bewildering. You’d think these people would catch on after a few decades that the Cubs are in a league of their own when it comes to utter futility, but not winning the World Series for the past century simply hasn’t daunted these individuals.
Perhaps that’s the problem — Cubs fans don’t realize that winning the league title is the objective of every professional sports teams. If this is the case, it would explain why they continue to throw money hand over fist at a team that has made its fans look like bigger losers than the players are. What other reason could there be?
My only other working theory is that Cubs fans know they should root for a team that has even a slim chance of winning a championship sometime while they’re alive, but sadly they’re caught in a vicious cycle.
They’re stunned that they somehow were trapped into rooting for the worst team in sports history, but they can’t stop. If they do, they’ll have to confront why they’ve wasted so much time and energy supporting such a squad.
To stave off being overwhelmed by such horror, Cubs fans live in denial. They decide that if they devote themselves even more to the team, this will push the Cubs over the edge of a league championship next year. But once the Cubs falter at the end of every season (as they have for 100 years), fans confront either admitting they’ve been wrong all these years or denying that the Cubs are a complete waste of space.
This denial pushes fans to increase their devotion, once again believing this is the key to the success that continues to elude the Cubs. So anything sporting Cubbie blue becomes the object of desire for these wretched souls. And when the new season opens, look out.
It’s sad, really, to see these people delude themselves year after year. If only there were some kind of intervention available. It pains me to consider that these poor sports fans will end up bitter, angry individuals when they eventually face their mortality sometime in their lives and realize they’ve been had by their favorite team.
Being a Cubs fans is to suffer from some sort of disease, and it’s rampant. To commemorate tonight’s opening of the annual Crosstown Classic between the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs, my company allowed us to come to work dressed in sports apparel promoting our favorite team. And judging by what I’ve seen, most sports fans in my newsroom are in for a life of misery.
OK, it’s not like rooting for the White Sox has been all that much better. But when I go to my eternal rest, I’ll bask in the glow of knowing that my favorite baseball team — at least once — won the World Series in my lifetime. How any Cubs fans are there who will never be able to make a similar claim?
I don’t hate Cubs fans; I pity them. But aside from speaking truth to power, what else can I do?
Stumble It!
