February 2015
My wife and I joined a marriage class at church recently, and each participant took turns telling the group about themselves. I said that my biggest hobby is being a baseball fan. After mentioning my favorite team, half the room softly chuckled in the typical fashion I’ve become used to. "Yeah, I usually get some nervous laughs after I say that," I responded. It was my polite way of saying that I don't appreciate ridicule and don't want anyone's sympathy.
I like being a Cubs fan. If I didn't, I would have picked a different team (or a different sport) a long time ago. Yet being a Cubs fan carries a stigma that is unlike anything in the sports world.
The Chicago Cubs are the American sports team synonymous with losing. I’ve yet to see an opinion poll on this, but I’m pretty sure they’d be the consensus choice by a wide margin. Their long streak of futility is well-documented. They last won a championship in 1908. They haven't even played in a World Series since 1945. In fact, they have only made the postseason six times following that last pennant.
I understand the weight of all this history comes with being a Cubs fan. But, to me, it means little. I've only been a fan for about 20% of that time. Since I joined the Cubs fan base, only 10 of the 30 MLB teams have won at least one championship. Thus, there are 19 others of which I could be a fan and still not have experienced the joy that comes with winning the World Series.
A streak of 107 seasons without a championship is staggering. But winning a World Series is an achievement that is both difficult and rare. That's why you see such great emotion during the run up to the World Series and the celebration that comes with winning the Fall Classic. It’s a journey not many get to take, and even fewer see it end in ultimate glory. It’s also a rare experience for the fans of each team. Even if every team took turns winning one World Series each, every year there would be one team that has gone 30 years without a championship, leaving an entire generation of fans suffering.
The Cubs are not the only team that has experienced futility, yet I understand that they are not “just another team”. There are currently 12 franchises that have gone at least 30 years without winning the World Series and eight teams who have never won a World Series altogether. Then there are the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox. Boston went 86 years without a championship before its magical run in 2004; the White Sox went 88 years until taking it in 2005. Yet the former were frequent contenders who came close many times, known for their bad luck, while the latter has been known as Chicago’s “Second Team” and never attracted the same attention for their drought as their baseball neighbors. Once those two streaks were gone, the Cubs stood alone as the undisputed kings of futility. Meanwhile, the eight teams who haven’t won a championship all came into the league in 1961 or later.
But there must be other factors that contribute to the “loveable loser” label as well. Being in a large market and having a big fan base certainly are contributing factors, but the Cubs have not always been this popular. Fifty or sixty years ago, hardly anyone attended their games. The 1969 team helped increase the team’s popularity, but the 1984 team brought them to a level of popularity that it has more or less sustained for the last 30 years. Before ‘84, the Cubs never averaged 21,000 fans in attendance per game; since then, they have never slipped below 23,000. When that ‘84 team got the Cubs into the postseason for the first time in 39 years, I think that helped bring awareness to the drought. That team fell one win short of the pennant, which gave fans, both old and new, a little taste of winning and made them thirsty for more.
Of course, myth plays a big role in all this. Surely, you can’t go more than a century without a championship unless some supernatural force was involved, right? Everyone talks about “The Curse of the Billy Goat”, which originated in 1945 when tavern owner Billy Sianis was refused entry into Wrigley Field because he wanted to bring a goat in with him. An outraged Sianis declared the Cubs would never return to the World Series. Up to now, he’s been correct. Many fans attributed Boston’s long championship drought to a curse that came upon them when the team sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, which, just like the story of the goat, makes for interesting folklore. The team was able to break this hex upon winning it all in ‘04. Or perhaps they finally had the team that was capable of getting the job done.
There are many possible reasons why the Cubs have been so bad for so long. Some blame poor management, others an outdated ballpark, and still others the fact that they play more day games than other teams, among other reasons. I agree with some of these to varying degrees. But I don’t believe in any curse, from a goat owner, or Steve Bartman, or anyone else. Winning a championship is hard. That doesn’t excuse the long drought, but there are other factors that better explain this.
No fan can escape this history, no matter how long they have followed the team. I think it’s a federal law that during any nationally televised broadcast of a Cubs game, the announcers must mention how long it’s been since they won a World Series or even a pennant at least once. Then there are those graphics they put on the screen about what the world was like in 1908: Theodore Roosevelt was president, gas cost three cents a gallon (or however much it was), etc. Yes, we know that already; I didn’t forget since the last time ESPN aired one of their games.
And what Cubs fan hasn’t experienced a smart-aleck taunt for staying loyal to their team? I wonder what things would be like today had the Cubs never won a World Series (they won in both 1907 and 1908). I think the fact that we have a number of years we can point to since they last won makes it easier to pick on them. Without “1908”, what would naysayers write on their signs or Facebook statuses poking fun of them?
As much as I like being a Cubs fan, many people see being a fan of this team as an abstraction, finding charm in rooting for a team that constantly loses. And I find that annoying. I like running into serious baseball fans, especially those who follow the Cubs, not because I can “sympathize” with them, but because they know I’m just as passionate and knowledgeable as anyone else. They’re actually able to talk about what’s happening with the team on the field, not tell lame jokes about how much the team stinks. I desperately want the Cubs to win and cling to the hope that they will someday, not because they are “loveable losers,” but because they are my team. Why should that be any different from rooting for anyone else?
