Spectator sports were never a thing in my family.
My sister and I were art-y, not sport-y. She was the dancer; I was the singer. We tried out for roles in the school shows, not spots on the school teams. We played in the orchestra, not on the field. The only athletic competitions we watched on TV were the Olympics and figure skating.
Dad always had the game on of a Sunday, but unless that game was golf, it rarely got his full attention. He didn’t hang with the boys in a bar, didn’t coach from the couch drinking beer with his buds. His nod to the male cultural norm was the colorful Slavic expletives he’d hurl at the screen on occasion and his involuntary shouts of delight/disgust at a particularly brilliant or atrociously poor bit of play.
Had I grown up in another town, my family’s artsy-intellectualism might have put the kibosh on me even knowing the names of the home teams. I grew up in Chicago. Well, Evanston, but same difference. Growing up in the Windy City meant loving da Bears and basking in the glory of da Blackhawks, who were enjoying a golden age, thanks to the legendary Bobby Orr.
Football and hockey — those affiliations were a given. Baseball was a choice.
Chicago has had two professional baseball teams since 1900; the White Sox and da Cubs. Both play major league baseball (MLB), but the Sox play it in the American League (AL), while da Cubs play in the National League (NL).
The Sox are South Side. Their home games were at Comiskey Park up until 1991, when it got renamed Guaranteed Rate Field (yeesh). The Sox’s first game in Comiskey Park was a 2-0 loss to the St. Louis Browns on 1 July 1910. Just sayin’.
Da Cubs are North Side. Wrigley Field is their home, built in 1914, but they’ve been playing ball since 1876. Yeah. That’s decades before the AL existed.
When Charles Comiskey brought his team to Chi-Town, da Cubs’ owner was so displeased, he filed suit. Comiskey won permission to stay, with the proviso he not use Chicago in the team name. So he christened his team the “White Stockings,” which wasn’t exactly an olive branch, as “White Stockings” was da Cubs’ original team name, used from 1876-1889. After giving da Cubs a nominal finger, the White Stockings set up AL shop as a direct challenge to da Cubs’ NL franchise, started snagging spectators with cheaper tix and alcohol, and the great North Siders/South Siders rivalry was born.
Sports fan, shmorts fan – you couldn’t grow up in Chicago without picking a side. As the unabashedly-biased history lesson above attests, I picked da Cubs.
Well, not exactly true. As a 4th generation Chicagoan, my club loyalty had been decided long before I was born. Evanston is North Side, but my mom grew up on the Jewish West Side, and my dad hailed from Gary, Indiana. Location wasn’t the determinant. We rooted for da Cubbies because they had history. Because they had Wrigley, the grand stadium I rode past 3 times a week on the way to ballet on the El train’s Red Line.
And we rooted for da Cubs because da Cubbies were always and forever the underdogs. Because da Cubbies were cursed.
They’d already been losing for nearly 40 years when the curse was cast, so there’s that. Anyway, back in October, 1945, Chicago tavern owner Bill “Billy Goat” Sianis came to Wrigley Field with his good-luck goat to cheer on da Cubs against the Detroit Tigers. The stadium ushers declined to seat the goat. When Sianis asked club owner P.K. Wrigley why, Wrigley replied, “Because the goat stinks.” Sianis took umbrage and cursed the team, “Da Cubs ain’t gonna win no more!”
It’s gotta be true. It’s all online, at the Billy Goat tavern’s website. (I kinda like this place. As I was copying the url, a joke-ad sped by on their home page, “Business is ba-a-a-ad. We now serve all parties – even Republicans.”)
That year, the Series went to the Tigers. Da Cubs were never the same again, some claim. In fact, they were exactly the same, which is to say, without a Series win since 1908. In a nation where winning is everything, da Cubs became the “lovable losers,” a lost cause, the team for dopes who value loyalty and effort above status and success, a team for the philosopher-fan.
We went to a Cubs game, my sister and I. Once. She probably remembers the why and wherefore. In my memory, it’s like a dream. Out of the blue, Dad decided to take us to see da Cubs at Wrigley. Suddenly, somehow, I’m sitting in the bleachers by Third Base. The baseman trots out, stands there looking attentive for a lo-o-o-ng time, trots back to the dugout, and then starts the cycle all over again.
I didn’t see the point of it at the time, though I did admire the way the guy hustled, as if his repetitive jog had purpose and meaning. The highlight of the day for me was the hot dog, but 50 some-odd years later, I appreciate what Dad did. I’m truly grateful he took us to see a game at Wrigley Field.
I would’ve been glad even if da Cubs hadn’t turned the world upside down and inside out Wednesday night. Even if the Billy Goat curse had held, even if Cleveland had come out on top. Even if da Cubs hadn’t won the World Series.
I am sure, rock-solid sure, that while every Cubs fan in the world was hoping they’d win, we were all ready for disappointment yet again. More than a century of frustration, a losing streak of epic proportions. . . done. End of an era. It’s over. At last.
Wednesday night was my birthday eve. Poised on the brink of a brand new year, I saw a 108-year curse broken – and by a stunning-beautiful play that started at Third Base, I might add. There’s a message for me in da Cubs’ triumph, an omen of great possibility, I’m sure of it. What adventures might be mine, what dreams might I realize in this topsy-turvy universe, where da Cubs have won the Series?
