In the fall of 2005, a serenity the likes of which I’d not previously seen in his 40-something oft-irritated years on the planet settled over my brother.
With a beatific sincerity, he turned to me and said words I shall never forget.
“I hope the Cubs win one of these,” Chuck Arvia said, “so my Cub fan friends can know what this feels like.”
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A World Series championship for the White Sox had melted the Cubs-hating heart of my big brother. It left an impression on me, the younger son of a man who once entered an American Legion raffle for Cubs playoff tickets just so, if he won, he could tear them up, put the scraps in an ashtray on the bar and light them on fire.
Don Arvia didn’t win that raffle, and the Cubs still haven’t won a World Series. But on Friday they begin a playoff journey toward what might be the end of a 108-season span without one, and a great many Sox fans are adrift on the spectrum defined by those opposing Arvia attitudes.
Including me. And, I might add, Chuck, who has since recanted his earlier sentiment.
“Doesn’t sound like something I’d say,” he said the other day. “I guess, if they won, whatever, because at least Mikey (a childhood friend) would be happy. But I kind of want to keep that streak going.”
On the other hand, I happen to know Mikey is married to a White Sox fan, and when the Sox were playing their title clincher in Houston, he refused to attend his wife’s family watch party. So (and I say this lovingly), forget him.
Not that Mikey is really the kind of Cubs fan you want to see get his comeuppance. But I know a lot of them — like the guy who always spells “Sox” with a “u” on his Facebook feed, because his Cubs happiness isn’t complete unless he simultaneously piles on suffering Soxdom.
In ’05, I can honestly say I wasn’t that guy, in reverse. I suppose I could have been, but I was too busy covering the Sox’s World Series run as a sports columnist for this publication, just as I’d covered the 1998 and ’03 playoff disappointments for the Cubs.
Covering a team tends to whittle away at the fanboy in most sportswriters. For one thing, we strive to practice objectivity. For another, after getting to know them over the grind of a season or two or three, it’s kind of hard to hate, say, Mickey Morandini no matter what shirt he’s wearing, just as it’s tough to find anything remotely likable about A.J. Pierzynski.
Lousy career choices aside, I still think I’d not have required so much luxuriating in another team’s misery to enjoy the success of my own. Sure, a little of that is fun — but in person, where you are quicker to remember why you like hanging around with that Cubs or Sox fan in the first place.
Consider that in 2005 there were just 6 million monthly users of Facebook. If I wanted to give a Cubs fan a hard time, it was via email, maybe a text message on my Motorola Razr, or over a drink.
Now, there are 1.23 billion monthly Facebook users, and loads of other social media platforms. Cubs fans can lob gloat-laden scud memes across cyberspace all day — and gosh, I never get enough of that picture of Robin Ventura getting wrangled by Nolan Ryan — just hoping to get a Sox fan’s goat.
Sorry, did I say goat?
Anyway, these are obviously tough times to be a Sox fan. The team’s most talented player has the emotional maturity of a Real Housewife and management’s best plan seems to be “let’s hope we get lucky.”
Such is the team’s present state that much of its fan base is rejoicing today that Ventura, beloved as a player, will not return after five seasons (one of them winning, all of them dull) as manager.
Conversely, it’s hard for most thinking Sox fans to work up much hate for this particular Cubs unit. The current ownership has done right by its fans every step of the way, improving its ballpark, acquiring top-dollar baseball-side management (both general and field), and finding players of great skill who (Aroldis Chapman excepted) seem like a bunch of good dudes.
Frankly, it’s a model many Sox fans would like to see their ownership adopt. Or, failing that, sell.
(Whatever the Sox do, just don’t tell us they can’t afford a rebuild because fans won’t come out. They finished 26th among 30 teams in the majors in attendance, drawing fewer than 2 million fans for the fifth straight season — and Rick Renteria as manager won’t set the turnstiles spinning.)
But, this is about the Cubs. The next few weeks promise to be entertaining. The stakes and the production values will be high.
In truth? My best self says my fundamental well-being will not be impacted whatsoever, regardless of the outcome of the MLB playoffs — or any sporting event, for that matter. My less than best self suggests there is something noble about the eternal suffering of Cubs fans, and I merely wish them continued nobility.
Ultimately, I’ll be watching. I’ll try to take it in as I do the Olympics, appreciating excellence regardless of affiliation.
I’ll try just as hard as Steve Bartman did to catch that foul ball back in ’03.
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Phil Arvia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.