On The Occasion of the Cubs Winning the World Series

Warning: not the usual content of this blog incoming. 

It’s 12:32 PM on the day the Cubs won the World Series, and it still doesn’t feel real. I literally just pinched myself to make sure I’m awake, and not just because of sleep deprivation.

I’ve been sobbing on and off since the game ended last night, which, I have to say, is I think something G—who has been a wonderfully supportive partner this season and has proven even more adept than I am at Cubs fan neurosis—has trouble understanding. Why does this shit matter so much, to me and many others?

Baseball is about a lot of things. It’s about capitalism. It’s about competition. Often (too often) it’s about masculinity. There’s definitely an opiate-of-the-masses effect in the long run. But in the meantime, baseball (and other sports) is about people. It’s about parents, siblings, children—the kinds of relationships Wright Thompson captures in this amazingly tearjerking ESPN piece.

Baseball’s been a key to my relationship with my dad and my brother—the Warren Park Little League star and current University of Chicago pitcher—but it’s also been one of the primary things connecting me to a broader community of fans.

My family moved to Chicago in August of 2003. I was a shy, quiet 15-year-old petrified to be starting high school with a bunch (ok, only 20-25, but for a former homeschooler it seemed like a lot!) of kids I didn’t know while adapting to a new city, synagogue community and the like. I was a baseball fan but didn’t have a hugely strong allegiance to one team, having mainly rooted for the Mike Piazza-era Mets while living in New Haven. I needed something to anchor a sense of place and to help me connect to Chicago and the people there.

And the 2003 Cubs delivered in the Cubsiest way possible. That wasn’t a great team; it had real talent and real weaknesses, and it somehow wouldn’t have felt right at all for the Cubs to deliver in my first year as a fan. Which, of course, they didn’t. But to this day I feel like that 2003 team—as much as it, and the following year’s squad, disappointed—cemented my ability to grow as a fan and indeed as a person. I learned to enjoy the deep, earnest voice of Pat Hughes on the radio, and even to embrace the unbridled enthusiasm and semi-coherence (at best) of Ron Santo.

I had the benefit of a wonderful high school crew (hope to see many of y’all at—I believe—my first ever Thanksgiving in Chicago!) who were patient with my quirks and helped me come out of my shell more than a little bit. And connection over baseball (and other sports to a lesser extent) was a big part of that. I think, just maybe, being a baseball fan normalized my usually geeky persona a little? Yes, fandom was depressing sometimes—but in another, deeper, way, it was liberating.

There have been ups and downs and some truly dreadful teams in the meantime, but I think I’ve lived through—in my 13 years of fandom—on the average the most successful era in Cubs history. Which is saying something. Playoffs in 2003, 2007, 2008, 2015, and 2016, with a World Series championship in the last year? Yes please! There have been losses—Santo in 2010, Ernie Banks before last season—but in recent years, especially since the hiring of Theo Epstein and crew, those losses have seemingly simply added to a grim determination to end the Curse once and for all. There was a sense it was coming, it was inevitable, it was just a matter of time. That sense only accelerated this season. And so it was.

Perhaps for that reason, perhaps because living in Upstate New York has put me at geographic remove from the chaos and angst of most of Cubs fandom, this postseason has felt somewhat surreal. I’ve listened to—only watched on TV once—every game except for the one that fell on the evening of Kol Nidre. I’ve obsessively texted, chatted, and email with family and friends. But, in the emotional, communal, indeed spiritual sense, I don’t think the championship (I just pinched myself again) is going to really hit until my plane touches down at Midway Airport on Thanksgiving afternoon. Even though Midway’s on the South Side, there will be banners. There will be lots of people in Cubs gear. There will be flags with Ws and flags with cubbie bears and flags with two blue stripes and four red stars on a white background. There will be Chicago. Not my only home—but it will feel like home.

Writing is the best way I have to process events. Often, it’s good for rationally thinking through what’s going on in the world. I hope I’ve done a pretty good job explaining myself here, but I’m not sure G is going to be convinced. And maybe there’s no such thing as a rational explanation. No rational reason I feel the need to prioritize going to Wrigley and laying my head against the bricks and looking up at that sign across the street on Sheffield that says EAMUS CATULI! and now reads for the first time ever (yes, it’s not that old) AC 00/00/00.

Because there is most certainly a spiritual element to all of this, especially for the Cubs and their fans. Even in my generally cynical, academically-minded traditional egalitarian Jewish world, there’s been an unusual amount of desire to believe—perhaps both in the Cubs and in something bigger. How else to account for this?

Prayer for the Cubs offered last night at the end of Kol Nidre at my parents' synagogue. I guess it worked. pic.twitter.com/QgCOKV0hvk

— Sandy Johnston (@sandypsj) October 13, 2016

or this?

By Ethan Schwartz. pic.twitter.com/gQxJlQm6oF

— Rav Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) November 3, 2016

Or Jonah Keri, one of the leading baseball writers in the world, placing the chaos of last night’s Game 7 into the framework of the Dayenu. Or the fact that a friend who I don’t know to be much of a baseball fan texted me a recording of Psalm 118—“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be happy in it”—before 7 AM this morning?

Baseball—or maybe, just the Cubs and their peculiar tradition of lovable loserdom—helps us fit the pieces together. For me, that has meant growing as a person and trying to embrace a certain faith that yes, one day, the Cubs will go all the way. Maybe all of that will vanish; I personally think this team is only starting on the path toward being a total juggernaut for many years. But whatever happens now, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my Cubs fandom–and to those who have kept me company and encourage me along that path–for helping me out over a key period in my life. And if some of that debt can’t be quantified or rationally understood, well, that’s OK too. Because after 108 years THE CUBS ARE ONCE AGAIN WORLD CHAMPIONS.

Pic credit: my dad