Being a Cubs fan means believing in the bad, the good and mostly just believing
Trying to explain what being a Cubs fan is like and why we don't stop believing
By
Bill Reiter
•
11 min read
CHICAGO-- On Thursday, still reeling from the glow of the Chicago Cubs' ninth-inning comeback in their Game 4 clincher against the San Francisco Giants to advance to just the fifth National League Championship Series in team history, I went to a place I haven't been since 2003.
Waveland Avenue.
The place where, 13 years ago, I reveled for eight innings as merely a fan before I came to believe --wholly, deeply, and absolutely -- that ghosts are real, at least those that haunt the Lovable Losers at 1060 W Addison here in Chicago.
This time I came with my children. Madeline is seven, Henry is four, and though we live in Los Angeles, something deep and embedded has made them Cubs fans. I usually feel guilt for this. We are in many ways the products of the clans we belong to. Some we join willingly, others are joined to us long before we have a chance to choose.
That, as much as anything, is part of the pain of the true Cubs fan. We did not choose this, but it still makes us as much of who we are, at least as a sports fan, as anything we've had control over. The losses, the ineptitude, the heartbreak, the letdowns and the meltdowns -- they're not just part of us. They're handed down, from generation to generation. They're part of where we come from, too, part of not just us but of the people we love the most.
My children spotted Wrigley Field for the first time and forgot how cold they thought they were on this October evening. They ran toward Wrigley. They touched her outer walls, as if she were something holy because, well, she is. My daughter screamed: "CUBBIES!" My son screamed: "I want to go in NOW!" And I thought: Oh God, I gave this to them, this disease of Cubs fandom.
I come by it honestly. Some of my earliest and finest memories are of Wrigley Field: The autographs at the old Cubs' players parking lot next to the ballpark, Harry Caray slurring a pre-game hello to me and my brother one fine summer day, the Ryne Sandberg foul ball bouncing from my fingertips, memories of my mom and my dad and my brother and my sister and I in that hallowed ground, happy, together, believers.
My grandfather, after whom I am named, met, courted and married my grandmother in Chicago. Other than his wife and his seven children, 17 grandchildren and 15 great-grand children -- all of whom he indoctrinated with a real love for the Chicago Cubs -- he may have loved nothing more than his Cubbies.
I have a Cubs-themed children's book grandpa gave my daughter when she was born, and though we'd read it to her many times, we thought she'd long since forgotten it. We live in L.A. now, and her affection and rooting interest in the Dodgers always amused me. But the words grandpa scrawled to her on the inside of that book -- words we read her every time we opened the book, whenever it made its way into the bedtime reading rotation -- must have stuck.
They say, in grandpa's distinct handwriting: "A day without the Cubs is like a day without sunshine."
This wasn't just his motto. It was a creed he lived by.
I realized Madeline had adopted that creed when, at a Cubs-Dodgers spring training game this past spring -- when I worked for a radio station partially owned by the Dodgers and we were surrounded by Dodgers fans -- she stubbornly insisted on buying a Cubs cap and cheering as a lone voice against those Dodgers fans. When the Cubs lost, she burst into tears.
That fact was reinforced this week when I returned from work Tuesday, just before the Cubs mounted its first ninth-inning comeback in a postseason-clinching game since 1910. Madeline had been on our couch for hours, screaming at the television, imploring the Cubs to get it done, yelling over and over that she believed in them. When they won, shockingly and against all belief and faith, she went as bonkers as any rabid fan could hope to.
Her reaction made me nervous. Made me proud and happy and guilty as hell. Which is why, two nights later, as we traversed Wrigley and finally got to Waveland Avenue, the joy at sharing this place with my children gave way to something else. A knot in my stomach.
"That," I told my children, pointing down Waveland, "is the spot of the worst moment of my life as a sports fan."
"Why?" my daughter asked.
"Why?" my son asked.
I stared down the street, stared all the way back to 2003. Why? What could I really say.
"Because," I said, "when you're a Cubs fan ... "
This is not an isolated event, this long-running juxtaposition of deep affection for our baseball team and the real pain the Cubs have brought us as fans.
Nothing can properly explain the doubt that creeps into the heart of a Cubs fan at the first sign of real trouble, or even imagined trouble. After Aroldis Chapman, who can throw 100 miles per hour in his sleep, failed to lock down a six-out save in Game 3 against the San Francisco Giants, Dan Le Batard tweeted this: "Cubs fans are expecting everything to unravel on the entire season from here, right?"
I don't know Dan personally; I just know that I respect his work immensely, and find him funny and thoughtful and uniquely smart. But still. He doesn't get it, and in not getting it he reminded Cubs fans that you can't know what it is to be part of this tribe unless you've had the bad fortune -- for now, at least -- to have been born into it.
Because yes, we expected every last bit of it to unravel. I certainly did. These are the Cubs. Numbers can't show you another sports fan's pain, not really, but they sure can point you in the general direction.
It has been 108 years since the Cubs won a World Series. They haven't played in one since 1945, when my grandfather was serving in World War II. They are 0-4 in the NLCS. There have been 18 Cubs teams in the postseason, and most have simply delivered us misery. The Never Say Die Mets, the Cubs meltdown against the Padres in 1984, Bartman, all of it.
And yet ....
This 2016 version of the Chicago Cubs should certainly be different. They have the third-best offense in baseball, and given that the teams ahead of them are the Red Sox (designated hitter) and the Colorado Rockies (Coors Field) there's an argument to be made Chicago has the best run-producing team adjusted for other factors in baseball.
They have the best pitching in baseball by a large margin -- best earned run average, best batting average against, arguably its deepest starting pitching and its best closer.
They have the best defense -- so important, so under appreciated -- in a generation.
They have the best managerial mind in the game.
They have, atop its baseball operations hierarchy, a man in Theo Epstein who has already broken a curse in Boston and who, if he wins a World Series with the Cubs, should be considered one of the greatest baseball people of all time -- players, executives, commissioners, anyone.
They have two MVP-candidates in Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, and the latter is capable of being the game's best player for a very long time.
They have ... well, they have it all.
So why the doubt? Why did grown men cry when the Cubs mounted that comeback with a 5-2 deficit in the ninth inning of Tuesday's Game 4, even though they'd still have had another shot to beat the Giants had they lost? Why the fear that cannot be separated from the elation that has drawn so many of us here for the weekend? Why joy mixed with a deep, deep sense of worry?
Because we Cubs fans have experienced the darkness that, as I peered down Waveland Avenue with my kids, made me shudder.
It was 2003, I was unmarried and living in Des Moines, and the curse was about to be broken. Or so they said. I didn't believe in curses. Not then. Not yet.
I had no money, but who needs money to be part of history? I jumped in the car and made the drive to Chicago for Game 6 of the NLCS. Mark Prior was pitching. The Marlins were on the ropes. My entire family had suffered with the Cubs for generations. I would be there when we -- when all Cubs fans -- would be rewarded for our painful but pure loyalty.
I couldn't afford to get tickets, but Waveland welcomed me. I took a friend -- a Cardinals fan who promised kindness if something awful happened; you may not be surprised to know I have hardly spoken to him since -- and hours before the first pitch took up my place. By the time the game began, bikers, lawyers, Iowa-based journalists, bartenders -- Cubs fans of all stripes -- made a jolly throng of the joyous ready to shed a sports burden we felt fully only now that it was about to vanish, forever.
Radios blasted, with a noticeable delay in the action. We heard the mood of Wrigley before the words confirmed and explained what we'd already felt.
That's how I found out the curse was real. I heard Wrigley make an inhuman noise that to this day makes me cringe when I recall it. I felt the dread ripple from Wrigley to those of us outside of her. Trite? Over the top? Sure, yeah -- unless you were there. Unless you're a Cubs fan.
You know the rest. Bartman. The collapse. When the game ended, and the mood turned ugly, I knew it was over. I knew the series was done. Game 7? Please. I'd planned to stay, but I walked several miles straight to my car, got in it and headed back to Iowa. I wanted no more part, firsthand, of this.
The trip home underscored that being a Cubs fan is different. I was exhausted. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I made it to a closed gas station and went to sleep somewhere in Illinois. It was the homeless people who woke me, banging on my car, a few hours later who informed me the gas station was long since abandoned. Just like the Cubs' chances, it was an ugly illusion.
Back on the road, I rolled my windows down and sped to stay awake. An officer pulled me over. When he came back with my ticket I pleaded -- why did I think this would matter -- "I'm a Cubs fan." I thought given what had just happened he'd show some mercy. He handed me my fine, smiled, and said, "I"m a Cardinals fan." I fell asleep in the Quad Cities a few hours later at a gas station that was neither closed nor abandoned, woke up in my car later that day, and made it home to Des Moines in time to watch the Cubs lose Game 7.
My story is not unique. It's not special. It's one of a million, just another example of why Cubs fans are who they are. Why, yes, we expected it all to unravel the other night, and probably still do.
It's not just baseball, or sports fandom. It's really not. It's about a shared experience with our friends, with our fellow fans, with our grandparents and fathers and mothers and siblings and, now for me at least, our children. It's not just the failures but sharing them as part of our sports lives, together, and still returning for more punishment, again and again, together.
It's tribal, it's familial, and it's time we get to pass on a different kind of experience to those we in turn have brought into this Cubs fraternity.
Madeline and Henry ran around Wrigley, whooping and hollering, screaming "Cubbies!" and "Go Cubs!" and "When's the game!" as strangers shouted out "that's right!" and Wrigley loomed over us.
The Cubs team that tries Saturday to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers is the best Cubs team in my lifetime, and maybe in any lifetime. They are that good. It's why my parents in Missouri, my brother in Brooklyn, my best friend from Minnesota and my kids from Los Angeles will be at the games this weekend, while I cover it for CBS Sports. It's why the hope and optimism, backed by Vegas' continued belief this World Series is the Cubs to lose, seems legit.
And it's why, if the curse that I now know to be real can't be overcome by this incredible team, the pain will be every bit as deep and lasting as what happened in 2003.
My kids know none of this, just like I didn't when I was a kid screaming for Jerome Walton's, Dwight Smith's and Mark Grace's autographs. Last night, as my kids posed for photos, they stared up at Wrigley with awe and insisted the Cubs were totally, totally going to win.
We noticed a light on near the ballpark. The Cubs official store was open, despite how abandoned the rest of the area seemed. A literal light in the darkness. We walked inside together, and on the speakers blared Journey's "Don't Stop Believin.'"
As my kids scampered around taking in all the Cubs stuff, I laughed and turned to the guy working the register.
Don't stop believin'
"This song play on a loop in here?"
Hold on
He looked confused. "What? No."
"Nothing," I said, but it's not nothing.
It's exactly right, the other thing that makes us Cubs fans, that binds us together, and that may finally be rewarded starting Saturday: The fact that we've never truly stopped believing our day will come, and that if we can't experience it maybe our children someday can.
