An Angry Cubs Fan Says Goodbye...Again

I'm an idiot. If you are a regular reader of mine, you are probably thinking, "Yeah, we pretty much already knew that." But I'm talking about the fact that I have spent more than 45 years of my life living and dying with a baseball team that for a century has not been able to win a goddamn championship.

When I was a youngster too stupid to know any better, I fell in love with the Cubs, and the fact that they were a lousy team didn't matter to me. I just loved the Cubs and I loved baseball. My heroes were Ernie Banks and Ron Santo and Billy Williams, and even though the Cubs didn't win anything, I believed that one day they would win it all and when it happened, I would get to enjoy it.

So I kept hanging in there, year-after-year, through all the bad teams and bad games, believing that someday it was going to happen. Next year would finally be here and my faith and loyalty towards the Cubs would be rewarded. I was proud to declare that I was a Cubs fan. My team played under the sun in baseball's most beautiful ballpark--a cathedral filled with the greatest fans in the world. It was fun. It was special. I couldn't imagine my life without the Cubs.

But now I am in my mid-50s and I sincerely doubt that the Cubs will ever win a championship in my lifetime. And because of this, I have become a bitter, cranky, old man for whom the joy of following my favorite team playing my favorite game has disappeared and been replaced with pain, anger, and despair.

After years of watching hundreds of horrible baseball games, I thought I had seen the Cubs at their crappiest. Then the 2008 postseason rolled around and my dear Cubbies, winners of 97 games, league leaders in runs scored, and favorites to represent the National League in the World Series, managed to put together a 3-game series against the Dodgers that surpassed anything on the crap scale that I had ever smelled before. Suddenly, Cubs fielders acted like the baseball was covered with poop, Cubs batters looked like they couldn't have hit Kim Kardashian's ass with a paddle, and Cubs pitchers were so wild they couldn't have found home plate with MapQuest. The Dodgers swept the series and for the 100^th straight year, the Cubs were, well, the Cubs.

Ten teams that didn't even exist when I became a Cubs fan have been to the World Series at least once since then and six of them have won it. How sick is that? And so now I am bitter. Watching the Cubs is no longer fun for me. There is no enjoyment--only pain. Even when the Cubs win, it isn't enough. Without a World Series, without a championship, everything feels empty and meaningless.

Why do fans who invest so many years, so much money, and so much emotion in a team, put trust in a bunch of mercenaries who have no ties to the team other than the uniform they temporarily wear? Cubs first-baseman Derrek Lee, by all accounts a first-class individual, was no doubt disappointed and embarrassed by his team's performance in the playoffs. But Lee has cared about the success of the Cubs only since 2004, his first year as a Cub and just one season after he played a big part in the Florida Marlins bashing my Cubs in that awful Bartman nightmare. And Lee, like any Cubs player, could be wearing a different uniform next year. But the same Cubs fans, still bleeding from the '08 debacle, will be at Wrigley Field cheering on whatever collection of millionaires is wearing Cubbie blue.

So I have had enough. I can't do this any longer. My health is at stake--both physical (I have high blood pressure) and mental (I want to reach into my TV and strangle Alfonso Soriano). It is time to break away from the Cubs and find happiness again. I need to give up this craziness and discover a hobby, a pastime that is both relaxing and rewarding. Or maybe I'll just do what I do best: drink a lot.

Of course I said the same thing last fall after the Cubs stunk up the joint in the playoffs and I also said it back in '03 when they broke my heart, stomped on it, and kicked it across the room. But I know that when winter ends, spring arrives and the ground starts to thaw, the smell of baseball will be in the air and I will be ready for another year of Cubs baseball--and undoubtedly another year of abuse--and I'll be back once again hoping for the impossible.

As I said, I'm an idiot.