My older brother had, and likely has to this day, the largest Mark Grace baseball card collection ever assembled. I believed the Cubs when they said Jerome Walton was the next greatest thing. That Shawon Dunston was everything. That Ryne Sandberg was the best second baseman, ever. That Vance Law needed those glasses. I was too young to know the defeat of 1984. I was too naive to know the playoffs of 1998 weren’t going anywhere. I was too excitable in 2003 and bitter in 2007 and 2008.
I met Harry Caray in the parking lot of Harpoon Willies. He autographed my egg roll receipt from Doc’s and then I promptly lost it. I went to some Cubs games as a kid, but perhaps two, because my dad only took us when someone gave him the tickets. He acted like tickets were only available to the people who knew how to get them, that the tickets were more expensive than anything else. That the tickets were unobtainable for people from Williams Bay. It turns out, the tickets were about $12 and as a huge surprise, the only thing that kept us from summer Cubs games was my fathers unwavering devotion to cheapness, the condition that plagues him to this day and is, at this point, terminal.
I took my son to Cubs games, lots of them. But he was too young to care, to fidgety to watch. We’d leave by the 7th and listen to Santo and Hughes call the win, or more likely, call the loss. I sat in the bleachers, dejected, as the Dodgers swept us from the 2008 playoffs. I sat in the upper deck box feeling similarly defected, while the Dodgers whipped us in game two of the NLCS. I stayed away from the World Series because I couldn’t take the stress, especially given the added stress of the financial commitment. I stayed home and watched.
Game 7, I presume, followed a similar path for most fans. I felt terrific up 5-1, feeling that this was indeed inevitable. Feeling as though I might be let down by a win. Feeling as though I’ve spent 38 years waiting for this, and it would feel strange to wait no longer. At 6-3, I felt less secure, less sure, but still confident. At 6-6 I figured it wasn’t a big deal to lose, because I was still young and this team would be back. It would feel good to languish for a while longer since that’s what I’ve known the longest. There’s something about waiting till next year, because it’s constant and steady, it’s always there, always something to think about and look forward to. There was comfort in all that failure. At 8-6 I felt certain again, and at 8-7 I thought of the crushing defeat that was brewing and determined that I was already over it. Next year would be fine. I hadn’t really waited that long, after all.
I can’t say that I cried when they won, because I didn’t. I didn’t think about my dead grandpa who famously was in line at the trough when Andre Dawson hit the only homer during that game we were given free tickets to sometime in the late 1980s. I didn’t regret turning my back on this team when after they tore my heart out in 2003/7/8, I just smiled and decided that it was time. Time, indeed.