The Chicago Cubs and What This Year Means for All of Us
We all inherit certain shared histories — ones that we know and feel intimately, but that others know little about. We try to relay them as best we can to others, but the longer the history, the deeper the emotion, the harder it is to make others appreciate it. That is one of many gaps that exist between people. As I sat in my living room with my wife and 2 year-old daughter on Saturday night, as we watched game 6 of the NLCS begin, I experienced that gap firsthand.
You see, as the first pitch was thrown out a Wrigley Field, and the crowd erupted, I tried to convey to my special ladies just how special this night could be. I felt myself grasping for the right words, and failing miserably. But as the third pitch to the Cubs’ launched off the bat of Dexter Fowler for a double — and the crowd exploded to dangerous decibel levels — I let them do the explaining for me.
Not a Dry Eye
And then, in the top of the 9th inning, with 1 out, as it became apparent that the Cubs were on the verge of winning their first pennant in 71 years, the cameras began panning across the sold-out crowd in attendance at Wrigley Field. 2 out of every 3 people they showed were crying (including Bill Murray). At that point, I ceased having to explain anything. Those tears — and the ones I myself was holding back — said it all.
After a double play ended the inning, and the game — and the crowd reached a noise level rarely achieved by humans — I called my mother. She was bawling, even after 5 minutes. You see, she and her estranged brother had not communicated in nearly 20 years. She desperately wanted to speak with him, but he would have none of it. It was a line that he had held firmly. On a whim, after the Cubs made history, my mom reached out to her brother. She texted him. He texted her back.
For the first time in almost 2 decades, a brother and sister were talking again, because the Cubs won the pennant. That’s the power of a shared history. It has the power to topple walls of division and resentment — if even for a few brief moments.
It’s About More than Baseball
So yes, it is about baseball. It’s about breaking a supposed curse that has kept the Cubs from a glory that every other franchise as old as them has felt at least once in the same amount of years. But it’s also about more than that. It’s about a shared history. It’s about shared slogans, rituals, conversations, memories, victories, and defeats. It’s about one of the ways in which we lose our differences — just for a blip on the timeline of our lives — and have the same hopes, and feel the same emotions.
The Cubs are not done yet. They need to win 4 more games to win the World Series — something they have not done in 108 years. 108 years of disappointment, of feverish optimism, of assuring anyone who will listen that however bad this year had been, next year will be the Cubs’ year.
It may well be that “next year” is here. But whatever takes place over the next few weeks, a certain truth about the power of sports has been revealed. Sports can provide us with something beautiful, something unifying, and at times something so emotional and cathartic that it transcends the sum of its parts.
I have by no means lived through the long history of disappointment that older Cubs fans have, but I have lived through my share. I have always retained optimism, in 1989, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2015. More importantly though, I have always retained an appreciation for just how special Cubs fandom is.
So I’ll say this in a way that I hope conveys all of the spirit and shared history that I feel as I write it: Go Cubs Go! Let’s close this 108 year-long chapter. Let’s turn a shared history of disappointment into a shared history of a long struggle valiantly won.