Monday, October 6, 2008

The Cubs Yet Again, sigh...

Thousands are moving around the Chicago area these days with long faces and sagging shoulders. The weather? Not at all; we’ve had a run of beautiful fall days. The answer is two words:

The Cubs.

A baseball franchise that hasn’t won a World Series for 100 years will now have to move into its second century of futility. The team that showed so much promise throughout the season—they finished with the best record in the National League—imploded in a three-game playoff series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, losing three straight games and being outscored 20 runs to 6.

As a longtime Cub fan whose ardor has cooled in recent years, I felt somehow strangely detached during these games, as if I knew precisely what was coming and accepted it with a fatalistic passivity. Sometime early in the second game of this series rout, I knew beyond any doubt that the Cubs were finished, wiped out decisively.

What now? Long-suffering Cub loyalists will no doubt fill Wrigley Field to capacity for every game again in 2009, ignoring the jibes from White Sox fans who can justly claim that their team did not collapse this year the way the Cubs did yet again.

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