I’d barely even heard of the team.
Years ago, one of my sisters had a sweetheart, a kid from Winnetka who later would become her spouse and was kind of obsessed with this not-usually-victorious baseball squad. When he wrapped up a handwritten note to her (people still wrote those back then), his sign off wouldn’t include the usual amorous verbiage. He’d simply sign it, “Cubs, Bill.”
It wasn’t long after my new husband and I settled back in the Midwest, putting marital roots down in suburban Chicago, that I began hearing the terms “die-hard Cubs fans.”
This was bewildering to someone who grew up being taken out of school routinely on opening day to head to Tiger Stadium, a kid who learned to recite “Casey at the Bat” from Dad at a tender age. It was beyond me how anybody could actually stick with a chronically losing team — especially when there’s another perfectly passable major league ball club right here in town.
Of course, I didn’t get it. Even now not everybody gets it, this undying loyalty to a historically flawed squad.
Lots do, yes — among them Will Byington. When we spoke recently, the Naperville Central High School graduate and dedicated Cubs fan waxed rather poetically about “the search for the Holy Grail” that is the team’s eternal effort to reclaim the title it last clinched some 107 years ago. Author of a visually splendid anthology titled “We Are Cubs Fans,” Byington seemed to take particularly meticulous care in pointing out that this amazing streak must be taken one game at a time.
The Klean clan, a Naperville matriarchy I interviewed a few years back, gets it, too. The elder of the group, Marian Klean, passed on in her mid-90s at the start of 2012 and so didn’t live long enough to see her beloved team go the distance. But she inspired her many descendants — most of whom, including Katie the dog, sported Cubs wear on the day we chatted — to carry the torch.
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And forever fan Don Sprague, whom I met a couple weeks ago at the Crosstown Pub & Grill’s Naperville location, attired in his well-broken-in Cubs wear, also gets it. He was at that fateful game a dozen years ago this week, when that fan named Bartman attempted that game-changer catch. It was devastating, but Sprague sees big differences between then and now — including the youthful lineup.
“The kids are younger,” he said. “They’re fearless. They think they can go through walls.”
There’s no denying this year is different. These really aren’t the Cubs we’ve always known and (mostly) loved, but that’s perfectly OK. And if those Johnny- and Jill-come-latelys sporting spanking-new Cubs wear want to perch in the fan section now, why not let them?
This year, with hopes running so extraordinarily high, it’s hard to resist feeling as if anything’s possible. It may even be — dare I say it? — that “next year” for which we typically agree to wait when October arrives and the playoff lineup shows nary a trace of the North Siders.
Sure, there was a time when the very utterance of such a brazen suggestions would elicit gasps and tsk-tsks, admonitions that verbalizing such a thought surely would jinx everything and embolden the dreaded Curse. But as Sprague noted, this clearly is a different ball club. It’s not what we’ve always bargained for.
I’ve heard it said this week that fans attending the remaining postseason games would be wise to don helmets if they’re sitting in the right field bleachers. These kids who are tearing the cover off the ball don’t seem to really know about the Curse.
Let’s face it: In the place where those ivy-covered walls provide iconic backdrop, there’s been some serious magic going on. The already-legendary “Schwarbomb,” sent soaring by 22-year-old rookie Kyle Schwarber in Game 4 of the division playoffs Tuesday night, landed under the right field beer sign, left lying between the e and the i of the Budweiser logo. It’s just sitting there, encased in a plastic box to protect it from the elements, and nobody plans to move it anytime soon. That sort of thing doesn’t just happen every day.
One can’t help but marvel at what’s happened to our long-suffering Cubbies.
I say let’s decline to entertain any lingering doubts. Let’s indulge in some fancy. The naysayers may yet insist that there’s no chance the team will take it all, that they’re still the Cubs and it just won’t ever happen. But singer-songwriter Steve Goodman also once suggested lyrically that it would be a cold day somewhere when the lights went on at Wrigley Field.
Then again, maybe a dash of cautious disclaimer, a little humility as offset to the hubris, would be a wise addition to the optimistic mix. After all, things didn’t end so well for the fabled fans of the Mudville Nine and their undying loyalty to the mighty Casey.
Oh, what the heck. I’ll just go ahead and say it:
GO CUBS!
Twitter @scarlman