Shocking, literally shocking

It was a simple nonchalant comment, made by my buddy Sam around 1:45 Sunday morning before we went to bed. I had spent the weekend at his house in Ann Arbor, MI, going to the Illinois-Michigan football game on Saturday afternoon (Thoughts on that game coming tomorrow on the blog) and then watching the Cubs final game of 2008. After the contest had ended and the Dodgers had officially swept our boys from the North Side, we reminisced about the season for a bit, and then the comment came:

“It says a lot about a Cubs team when we’re shocked that they got swept in the first round.”

Those 19 words define what it means to be a Cubs fan. We’ve come to expect failure so much, that normally, a first-round elimination wouldn’t faze us any more than a drunk-fight in the Wrigley bleachers. But this season’s Cubs team was so good, and expectations were so high for this October, that it actually hurt when they failed in the fall. It wasn’t like last season, when the Cubs went from a 96-loss team in ‘06 to a 85-wn team, coming from behind all summer to finally catch the Brewers, winning the NL Central on the third-to-last day of the season and then just being overmatched by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLDS. This year, the team was in first for over 80% of the year, had the most talented team in the entire National League, and had national experts and local analysts thinking that this would be the year that the Cubs finally would be the ones hoisting the trophy at the end of the month.

But once again, just like it has for the past 100 years, 2008 ended with a letdown. Maybe in a few months, like February, I’ll look back at these past six months and smile. I’ll remember the come-from-behind wins, the dominant pitching performances, the great summer at Wrigley where it seemed like every day, there was a W flag flying atop the scoreboard when the game was over.

Right now though, I’m just upset. Upset that the team failed to show up for October, that they killed themselves in all three game (too many walks in game one, too many errors in game two, too many runners left on base in game three), and most of all, that they actually had me thinking that they could win this year. After living through 2003 (when the Cubs were five outs away from winning the NL and then choking away both game’s six and seven) and 2004 (when the Cubs held a three game lead in the wild card with a week left in the season but wound up going 2-5 and missing the post-season), I figured I would never convince myself that the Cubs could actually win. Yet once again, only four years later, I fell into the trap, and now I’m questioning why I even follow sports in the first place if all that comes from it is excessive pain and disappointment.

There are many people to blame for this October’s collapse, from Alfonso Soriano (1-14 in the three games) to manager Lou Piniella (never could figure out a consistent batting order) to the editors at Sports Illustrated (what’s with putting the Cubs on the cove a week before the playoffs start?). So it’s not like the finger can be pointed at one player or person- though I am giving the finger to anybody I approach on the street who tries to rub in the fact I support an unsuccessful team. This series loss rests on the whole team, and maybe even all of us who support them. There’s no doubt fan pressure was one of the reason’s the Cubs weren’t playing their best baseball this past week, and as somebody who was at Wrigley Field for game’s one and two, I saw first-hand how the 40,000-plus at the Friendly Confines reacted to every negative play that happened to the boys in blue.

Who knows what 2009 will bring, and frankly right now, I don’t care. I’m going to need this long off-season to convince myself that being a Cubs fan is worth it, that the payoff of actually winning the World Series one day makes up for all the heartbreak that has come before it. One thing I do know is this: Next October, if the Cubs make it to the playoffs, not a single part of me will be shocked if they get swept in the first round of the playoffs.





-By the way, if you know what movie the headline comes from, consider yourself a friend of mine