The Cubs Reach the Promised Land. Now What?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/opinion/the-cubs-reach-the-promised-land-now-what.html

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Chicago — I went to my first Chicago Cubs game in 1975, over the objections of my father, who said a Cubs fan, coming to believe in the futility of human endeavor, will have a sad life.

I’ve been to hundreds of games since. I’ve seen outfielders befuddled by routine fly balls. I’ve watched Dave Kingman hit a towering dinger onto Waveland Avenue. I’ve seen a blue Cubs cap perched upon the vertiginous Afro of José Cardenal, who once missed a game because, he said later, his eyelid was stuck open.

To me, the Cubs seemed like the Hebrews, wandering for decades in the wilderness. Moses understood that it would take a new generation, un-wrecked by the past, to claim the promised land. For the Cubs, that new generation has finally arrived, with the team making its first World Series appearance in 71 years tonight.

For some of us in Cubs nation, success has created a new kind of angst: Will the Cubs emerge from 2016 as a different team, made less special by excellence? Will we become ordinary? What will it mean to cheer on a winning team?

To young fans, less used to the expectation and pain of failure, this must sound insane. I can stand beside them on the heights of Moab, go down into Canaan for a hot dog and a frosty malt, but some part of me will always remain in the wilderness.

That’s what I was thinking in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series this year. I was sitting in the upper deck at Wrigley Field, watching the Cubs play the Dodgers. It was just one game, but it was a game that encapsulated the season.

The Cubs took the lead early. But then the Dodgers really got going in the 8th inning. In response, the Cubs manager, Joe Maddon, called for the relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman. He came in with the bases loaded, no outs, which is like turning a country over to a new president as the financial markets are collapsing.

Chapman looked calm, but only at a distance. On the scoreboard, you could see he was soaked. He struck out the first two batters, but the next hit cleanly, setting the mobile awhirl.

Tie game.

It was a moment known to every Cubs fan, that moment when the plot turns and you suddenly sense you’ve been cast as the loser. That old familiar dread rushed in. When I felt this way in the past, I’d turn to the fan next to me and he’d meet my gaze and we’d know each other as well anyone can be known. But when I looked around that night, people everywhere were hopeful.

“Fools,” I muttered. “Don’t you know this is how the end always begins?”

People around me started to chant. We Don’t Quit. We Don’t Quit. “What are they talking about?” I thought. “Of course we quit. We’re the Cubs.”

Think of 2003, the “Bartman Game,” when Chicago was likewise on the verge and that poor fan reached for a foul, possibly interfering with a Cubs outfielder, who, rather than get on with it, blamed the fan for the team’s collapse that followed. Or the 1984 playoffs, when Cubs first baseman Leon Durham, after letting a routine grounder through his legs, an error that paved the way to doom, blamed his teammate Ryne Sandberg for spilling Gatorade on his glove in the dugout.

Theo Epstein, who ran the Red Sox in the 2000s and took over the Cubs front office in 2011, is the first executive who seems to understand that it was culture that cursed the franchise. Epstein went after it like God letting old-timers expire in the desert. New players meant new energy. The Cubs are among the youngest teams in baseball. Their premier player, Kris Bryant, is 24 years old; their breakout star, Javier Báez, is 23; their all-star shortstop, Addison Russell, is 22. As every parent knows, kids are great because kids don’t know.

In the bottom of the eighth, it was two outs, bases loaded. Then a Cubs catcher, Miguel Montero, drove a ball out into the bleachers. The crowd went nuts in the same way I’ve seen crowds at Yankee Stadium go nuts — as if it were expected.

I suddenly realized what this team would mean for Chicago, what it would do to fans. For as long as anyone remembers, following the Cubs has meant embracing futility, choosing the losers over the winners, seeing the romance in failure. A Cubs fan was Ecclesiastical. Among all other spectators, only she understood the truth: Life is but vanity; come October we’ll all be watching the Bears.

Cubs fans will now enter the everyday world, where sometimes you lose but sometimes you win. Bill Murray was filmed at Wrigley during a climactic moment in the series. He is seen going from cheering to sobbing back to cheering. Happy but sad, because being a Cubs fan always meant something and now will mean something else.

I wish it had happened when I was 17 and could celebrate properly. I wish it had happened before my character formed. Maybe I’d have learned to cherish my fellow man and take yes for an answer and accept all the love that’s been showered on me. My father warned me, when I was 8, if I became a Cubs fan, I’d spend my whole life waiting. Wrong! It was only 40 years.