Sunday, October 23, 2016

Why I Am Rooting Against the Cubs

The Chicago Cubs are in the World Series for the first time in 71 years and they have a good chance to win the World Series for the first time in 108.
And everyone will be rooting for them. Except me.
Why? Because as someone who is not a Cubs fan, the streak is fun. It adds to the mystique of baseball. And every year is a new chance for them to either win it all. Or lose in painful fashion and add another chapter to their painful lore.
Haven't the Red Sox become a lot less fun now that they have won 3 World Series titles in your lifetime, instead of 0 in an octogenarian's?
Of the 7 billion people on Earth I'd bet few than a couple thousand were actually alive in 1908.
There's the Billy Goat curse, Leon Durham's glove and of course Bartman, you want all that history to end just so the nickel dime people who don't even work can celebrate and get drunk in some bar?



Note: The only good thing that would come out of a Cubs win would be the absolution of Steve Bartman. The poor guy was treated horribly. Yes, he made a mistake, but it's one many of us would have made in the same circumstance. His biggest problem is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for that he was ostracized from his community? I don't want to the assholes who threw beer on him and threatened his life celebrate a World Series title.



Another note: At least Bill Buckner was on the team. He was reasonably expected to field that ground ball.

One more note: There is one other good thing. If Theo Epstein is the general manager who breaks the curses for the Red Sox and the Cubs and he does so this time with Joe Maddon, maybe some people around baseball will start to do things differently. Instead of doing things the way they've always been done, because they've always been done that way, maybe people can look at how the Cubs became a model franchise (they built from the farms, and added key pieces once they were close, spending a lot of money on defense) and stop making the same mistakes they've been making for years.

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