In this 2 minute and 36 second sneak peek, clips are shown of Vaughn watching a Cubs game on WGN, as well as playing Madden ’06 and GTA: San Andreas for his PS2. Plus I have read that the movie starts with Vince at Wrigley Field and somewhere in the one hour 45 minute flick there is an Aniston nude scene. This is definitely a must-see.
The strange thing about ‘The Break Up’ though is not that there’s a character that’s basically my carbon copy. It’s that the film was shot right about the same time that fellow Hollywood A-listers Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were beginning to date. With Pitt heading off to Africa with Laura Croft, it meant that while Aniston was filming her movie, she really was going through a break up.
I began to ponder this recently. Being somebody who has never been in a romantic relationship, I can’t even begin to understand what it feels like to see your ex-spouse messing around with another person. That’s got to be like having your heart being ripped out off your chest, seeing someone hold it in front of you, and then watching them throw it on the ground and spit on it.
Wait, that sounds familiar. The heart ripping, being made a fool of, being treated like thrash. Where have I felt this before? Oh right, I’m a Chicago sports fan.
I did extensive research, a lot of heavy number crunching, and some serious cut and pasting all to answer one question: Should I break up with my loyalties and pick some new favorite teams?
To make this easier on myself, I decided to only focus on my three favorite professional teams: the Bears, the Bulls, and sigh the Cubs. I’ve gotten some stats for you, the high and low points of our relationship, and then like at the end of the TV show ‘Blind Date’, I will determine if we should stay together or go our separate ways.
The Bears:
Regular Season record in my lifetime---147-156
Winning percentage---.46%
Relationship Recap---The Bears play in my life can be summarized by a Clint Eastwood film, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’. While every few years the Monsters of the Midway can be surprising (2001, ’05), the usually are somewhere between average and mediocre. I was born at the beginning of the end of the Ditka years, began to pay attention when Wandstat took over, suffered through Dick Jauron, and finally am excited for the future of our relationship with Lovie Smith at the helm.
Sweetest Kiss---April 15, 2000---‘And with the ninth pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears select Brian Urlacher from the University of New Mexico.’ 22 words. That’s all it took to change the Bears from being a soft, weak, lazy defensive team into the bone-crushing, ball-hawking, fierce unit that they are now. Also on that day the Bears picked up safety Mike Brown, and the Arizona Cardinals drafted future Bears back Thomas Jones.
Worst Fight---October 17, 2004---I picked this game specifically because I happened to be sitting in one of my uncle’s seats in the fourth row of section 124 behind the south end zone at Soldier Field that day. With Rex Grossman obviously injured, the Bears starter at quarterback on this day was Jonathan Quinn, and to put it nicely, he was about as successful as Dick Chaney would be in shooting range competition. In their 13-10 loss to the Redskins, Quinn was ten for 22 for a total 65 yards, which comes out to about three yards per pass attempt. He threw no touchdowns and one interception. I’ve seen some horrible offensive displays (Remember the old John Schoop WR Screen on third and eight), but this was just disgusting.
A week later Craig Krenzel was under center and Quinn was shuffling through the classifieds looking for a new job. Verdict---Hopefully we’ve been through the worst that this relationship has to offer, which includes people named Enis, McNown, and Kordell Stewart. I like what Lovie and Ron Rivera are doing with the D, I hope Rex Grossman can stay healthy, and if we could for once live up to the hype, we can be Super Bowl Contenders. Because of this, I’m sticking with Da Bears.
The Bulls:
Regular Season record in my lifetime---849-677
Winning percentage---.56%
Relationship Recap---The Bulls are kind of like Daunte Culpepper on your fantasy football team; either really good or really bad. The early years were amazing, with the six championships, the eleven consecutive playoff appearances the two future hall-of-fame players and the greatest coach ever. Then we kind of were off speaking terms for a while, as Tim Floyd, Marcus Fizer and Dalibor Bagaric came to town. We’ve gotten past that now, and I feel our relationship is moving in the right direction.
Sweetest Kiss---June 13, 1997---1991 brought the Bulls there first title, ’92 was Jordan’s revenge versus Portland, ’93 was Paxon’s game-winner, ’96 cemented their place as the greatest team ever, and ’98 was the ultimate final chapter to an amazing book. Still, I feel the 1997 Finals series versus Utah was the greatest of all. While most series’ only have one memorable game, (Other then game 1 vs Portland, does anybody remember anything else from that series?) the ’97 Jazz series had three. Jordan’s game one buzzer-beater, the game five flu game, and then game six. MJ had 39, Pip knocked in 23, but it was Steve Kerr’s jumper with five tics left that gave da Bulls their fifth championship trophy.
Worst Fight---June 27, 2001---I chose this date over three other contenders as the worst day for me as a Bulls fan. And the funny thing about it is, as I was living it, I thought it would be one of the greatest dates. On 6/27/01 the Bulls selected Eddy Curry with the fourth pick in the draft, then 15 minutes later, traded the franchises best player since Jordan, Elton Brand, to the Clippers for the draft rights to Tyson Chandler. Elton is (I should say still is) averaging 20 points and 10 boards, and led his team to being one miracle Raja Bell three away from the Western Conference Finals. Eddy is now a New York Knick, after suffering an irregular heartbeat in 2005 and refusing the Bulls to conduct tests on him to see if the problem was career-threatening. Tyson, who is still as thin as string-cheese, averaged 5.3 points and nine boards as the third guy off the Bulls bench in ’06.
Verdict---The six championship rings in my youth, as well as the recent back-to-back playoff appearances, have convinced me to stay with the Bulls.
The Cubs:
Regular Season record in my lifetime---1438-1540 (Through June 9, 2006)
Winning percentage---.48%
Relationship Recap---The first thing that jumped out at me when figuring out how the Cubs and I get along was that we’ve had our differences from the very beginning. Since I was born in the middle of July, I had to calculate the Cubs 1987 record from the date of my birth, not counting the first 88 games of the season. Here’s what was determined:
Cubs record from Opening Day to July 13, 1987---47-41
Cubs record after July 13, 1987---29-44
* The Cubs only played 161 games in ’87
Yes, if I had been able to read when I cam out of the womb and picked up the Sun-Times or Tribune, I would have checked the standing’s and seen the Cubs were tied in second place in the National League East. Then the team went from six over .500 to end up finishing nine games under. Let’s just say that this courtship got off on the wrong foot.
Sweetest Kiss---September 27, 2003---It was Rosh Hashanah. The first day of Tishrei, 5764. So it only makes sense that it was of the most God-loving days of my life. The evening before, rain had fallen from the heavens, raining out the Cubs game with the Pirates. The North-Siders were a half game up on Houston for the lead in the National Central, with three left to play (Houston only had two games left). Saturday’s double-header would be the most important day in Cubs history in five years. The Cubs squeaked by in the first game, winning 4-2 behind a lights out Mark Prior. Then, in the first inning of game two, the crowd started cheering as if the stadium was giving away free beer. I looked up from my vending and saw the scoreboard read Houston 2 Milwaukee 5.The Cubs were one and a half up with only two to play. This motivated the boys in blue as they went out and scored five runs in the bottom of the second, and behind Matt Clement, the Cubs won game two 7-2, giving them a double-header sweep and more importantly, their first division title since 1989.
Worst Fight--- December 9, 1992---So many choices for this. I could have picked the first two weeks of the ’97 season, when the Cubs started off 0-13. Or the Bartman game. How about the entire 2000 season? So how did I end up with a date that isn’t even in the baseball season? Because this was the day that the Cubs officially gave up for the next ten years. Greg Maddux, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, declines the Cubs offer and ends up inking with the Atlanta Braves. At age 27, Maddux goes to the Dirty South were he ends up winning three more Cy’s, as well as ten Gold Gloves, four ERA titles, and something he never would have gotten in Chicago, a World Series ring. Verdict---Let’s see, they’ve rarely been good in my life and the future doesn’t seem much brighter. But it’s been 98 years since a title, so the odds are that one of these years the breaks have to come our way. I’m sticking with them.
So in the end, I decided to take back all three of my teams. Was it hard? Yes. Was it foolish? Probably so. But I’m no Brad Pitt; I stick out the tough times. Looks like there’s a lot more heart ripping in my future.
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