Living a movie

At the start of the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber’, the main character, Lloyd Christmas (played by Jim Carey), faces some bad luck. He gets fired from his job as a limousine driver because he sprints off an airport jet way. His pet, a parakeet named Peety, is decapitated. His buddy Harry also loses his job after using his entire savings account to transform his van into a dog on wheels. And then Lloyd spends the last of his dollars buying groceries, only to be robbed by a little old lady on a motorized cart.

I used to always laugh during this movie when these events occurred. Seeing Lloyd suffer through this turmoil was hilarious. It was so enjoyable seeing another person go through these ridiculous problems. I mean, it would never happen in real life that four bad things would happen to the same person, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. That’s just impossible. Right?

Apparently I never got the memo addressing ways to be tormented, because the whole four bad things in a row actually happened. To who you ask? How about not just one guy, like in the movie, but to the entire nation of Chicago Cubs fans. Everyone who wears a red C on their blue hat and ventures to Wrigley Field over the summer, all the people who tune in to WGN to listen to Pat and Ron, the men, women and children that do the YMCA during a pitching change. We’ve all just been hit with a punch to the stomach for the fourth October in a row, and frankly, it’s starting to really hurt.

The winter of 2003 may have been the toughest I’ve ever experienced. It was cold, the Bears were horrible, and the sad thing was, none of that mattered. After seeing the Cubs get OhSoClsoe, it was impossible not to be depressed and have dreams consisting of the question ‘What if?’ and nightmares recalling what actually did happen. If you aren’t a Cubs fan, you can’t realize what those five months from the end of the ’03 season to the start of ’04 felt like. Everyone who had a rooting interest in the game remembers exactly where they where for the eighth inning of game six. That was the inning where the name Bartman became a new Chicago curse word, the inning where Alex Gonzalez transformed from bum to first class A-hole, the inning where Dusty Baker showed his first signs of not understanding how to manage a team. 2003 was for my generation what 1984 was to the previous and 1969 before that. The season that still stings, and will always burn a hole inside every blue-hearted person until the day that the Cubs finally win the World Series.

The following October, when the Boson Red Sox won the World Series, was a very bittersweet time for Cubs fans. We’ve always had a bond with the Red Sox, kind of like two Vietnam vets. We may have led different lives, been from different places, seen different things, but we will always have that one bond that we share. That bond was that both the Cubs and the Red Sox won World Series championships about as often as Bob Knight goes to an anger management class. We even shared heartbreak from 2003, when both teams lost in a similar manner. But then in ’04, Boston broke through. After being down 3-0 in a best of seven series to their rival New York Yankees, the Sox stormed back, winning the last four to cap of the greatest comeback in sports history. They then swept St. Louis to win their first world title since 1918, a span of 86 years. As a Cubs fan, watching the Red Sox win the World Series was similar to watching a buddy of yours get a date with the hottest girl in the class. You’re happy that he got the girl, but in the back of your mind you wished that it was you that was taking her out, not your friend.

The autumn of 2005 was another tough one for Cubs Nation. That was because our cross-town neighbors, the Chicago White Sox, were crowned as league champs. It’s hard enough having to have to go 90+ years without a championship. It’s almost impossible to live in a city that is already divided based on baseball team when the other team is in the penthouse while yours is in the outhouse. Everywhere you went, from driving down the expressway to walking down a city street, people were wearing White Sox championship gear. Now, I don’t have a problem with real fans rocking the shirts and hats, but the majority of the people who had these clothes on weren’t real fans. They were people who wanted desperately to feel like they had done something worth celebrating, so they posed as White Sox fans. And to make themselves feel like real fans, they continuously tormented us Cubs supporters. But where were they in September, when their team was playing so poorly? Probably where they were in every other year pre-2004, at home, not caring at all about the White Sox.


While 2003 was painful, 2004 was awkward and 2005 was a nuisance, 2006 was a complete shock. That’s because the winners of the ’06 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals, were a team that the Cubs completely dominated throughout the regular season. While the Cubs may have only won 66 games all season, they did go 11-8 against the champs, a better record then the Cubs recorded against any other opponent. So how could it be that the worst team in the National League gets manhandled by the Pirates and Nationals of baseball, yet wins almost 60 percent of their games against the eventual champs? It makes no sense at all.

So during the last four years the MLB has crowned a team that broke our hearts, our fellow losers, our cross-town foes and our archrivals as champions. What more can go wrong for this franchise? Will Dusty Baker take over the Royals in 2007 and have them win the World Series? Is Sammy Sosa going to come out of retirement and lead the Brewers all the way? How about Kerry Wood signing with Houston and having him pitch a no-hitter against us the last day of the season to push us out of the playoffs. Something horrible is destined to happen to the Cubs, because that’s what always happens. Lloyd Christmas may have been dumb, but us Cubs fans who follow this team are obviously dumber.