I see the future, and am ashamed.

I distinctly remember the 2004 World Series when the Boston Red Sox finally won their first Championship since 1918. As a diehard Cubs fan, I rooted for them to win. As a Cubs fan you HAD to root for them, they were as luckless as we were. It was an “ilk” thing I guess. It was easy to root for them, they were the underdogs, they had a huge fan base and they were just like us, another major market that was in a drought.
Everyone loves to cheer for the underdog, so unless you were a Cardinals or a Yankees fan, you wanted the BoSox to win the World Series, right? The BoSox were rivals of the Yankees, and no one outside of bandwagon jumpers and people who lived in New York liked the Yankees. As all of us baseball fans know, there isn’t much to like about the fucking Yankee’s. They bought themselves a trip to the postseason every year by spending inordinately more than any other team in the league, which meant that they were almost always shoe-ins for the pennant race in the AL East. They also had an owner that was slightly more likable than Marge Schott, and that’s even taking into account that Schott was a notorious racist who let that fucking dog of hers roam around and takes shits on the field. Let’s be honest, it comes down to the fact that the Yankees always won every fucking year, they had the best talent every year, and as a baseball fan we were all forced to hear about them….Every fucking year.

They were the equivalent of Souja Boy’s song “Crank Dat”.

Right about this time, (at least in 2004) everyone knew at least one Yankees fan, and slowly but surely, you started to despise them. They were a nice acquaintance to have years ago, but in 2004 you could barely remember what was so likeable about them. Somehow as the BoSox made it to the World Series in 2004 you found yourself both rooting for Boston as the underdog and because your Yankee friend was wearing on your last fucking nerve. Maybe it was because they had beat the Sox in dramatic fashion in the playoffs off of Yankee Aaron Boone’s homerun in 2003. Maybe it was because we as baseball loving America were just fed up with them. Who knows? It was probably a combination of a million little things, and a couple big things, but your Yankee’s buddy was slowly moving down a rung or two on your friendship ladder. C’mon, they’re all the same. They make up fictitious stories about why they were a Yankee’s fan. You and I have heard it all. They used to live in Albany, or Schenectedy, or one of the Boroughs. Probably the douchiest one, like Bensonhurst. Or the Yankees were what they were raised on because it was their dad’s favorite team. Or they had an uncle that needed a liver, just like Mickey Mantle. The bottom line was that they liked the Yankees because it was easy to like the Yankees. The lemming mentality of most people make it pretty damn easy to gravitate towards winners. They didn’t have to look at the newspaper every day and see that their team hadn’t won the night before, the decade before or for a hundred long years. And fuck them for that.


Fast forward to today. Unless you live in a baseball city (and maybe if you still do) the majority of baseball hats you see will be Boston Red Sox hats. You walk into your neighborhood tavern and people that you have known for years are wearing, for the first time, a Red Sox hat. They of course tell you (they call it reminding you) that they have a cousin that lives in Worcester. They tell you that Dustin Pedroia was the sliced bread, before you know, bread was sliced. They think of course that Manny sucks now, because, well, because he doesn’t play for the BoSox anymore. They even think (you actually made this up) that the surgeon that worked on Peter Gammon’s brain was guided by the lord almighty. They’re jackasses, and just like the Yankees, you start to hate them for it. This time around though, you saw it coming and you have your guns loaded. It usually starts after one too many beers at the pub. You remind him that the Sox are no better than the Yanks when it comes to spending money. You groan because it seems that every time you turn on a sports station the Sox are playing. You think its witty to refer to ESPN as the EastCoast Sports Propaganda Network once a week. Your buddy reminds you that it wasn’t funny the first time, and it still isn’t. Somehow even though it is 2008, you still have the image of Curt Schilling’s bloody sock ensconced in your mental roladex. You think nothing of it when you see a message alert scrolling on the bottom of the TV about a blister on Beckett’s index finger. Just when coverage dies down a bit, one of their rookies throws a no hitter. Summarily, as soon as everyone stops talking about no hitters, everyone is talking about Manny Ramirez leaving Boston. The only reprieve that you get is because of Brett Favre. You are seriously considering building a Favre shrine in your garage because of the lack of Boston coverage. This ends quickly, you wish death, disease and pestilence on Favre.
It’s official. You now know more about the Boston Red Sox than your second child, and somehow you start to hate your second child because of it.



Rewind almost two years ago. I am outside Busch Stadium with a buddy of mine, we are arguing with a ticket scalper about the price for nosebleed seats. It’s the Detroit Tigers versus the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. I’m torn, do I root for the Cardinals who are a divisional rival of the Cubbies, or do I root for the Detroit Tigers the team that last beat my Cubbies in the Series back in 1945? I decide that this whole internal conversation is a joke, especially since my father wasn’t even a zygote in 1945 and I didn’t even know Hank Greenberg was Jewish until a recent HBO special. With exception to 2004, as usual, I don’t have a horse in this race. All of a sudden 3 F-15’s kick the afterburner in high gear right over the entrance behind the home plate gate. It reminds me of lighting cigarettes with a Bunsen burner in high school, except louder. And about a hundred times more awesome. I look at my buddy and we have ear to ear grins. We are starting to think that it would have been cool to have had those 250 dollar nosebleed seats now. He is a huge Cardinal fan, and if any of you have ever been to St. Louis you know that there is only one show in town. The Cardinals. It’s like traveling through Nebraska in the 80’s, all you see is Husker paraphernalia. The only time that you see rival fans in St. Louis is when the Cubs are playing them, and even then we’re massively outnumbered. That is a rarity in any National League park when the Cubs are playing.
The Cardinals win the game, and later the Series. I congratulate my buddy, and tell him to enjoy it because it is going to be a long time before the next one. I’m dead serious. He opening laughs at me. This has been happening to Cubs fans since their first game.


After the game I casually mention to him that when we finally do win the whole shindig it will be hell on earth for Cardinal fans. He looks at me quizzically, as he’s truly mystified. As I explain to him, right after his beloved Cards won game four why his life will be a living hell, his face shows signs of disgust. I explain to him in the unlikely event that the Cubs are even in a World Series everyone will be rooting for us. Everyone. There will even be lesser Cardinal fans that will cheer us on. That’s right, even teams that are Cub rivals, hated rivals, will cheer us on if we make it to the World Series. I will hate them for it. Every fanboy stan will be wearing a Cubs hat or jersey. People that you have known for over ten years will proudly explain what a wonderful city the city of Chicago is. You never even knew they visited before. You’ll see Cub fans everywhere. At the mall, the bookstore, the gym, everywhere. The goddamn mailman is wearing a Cubs hat! Your brother in law now wears a Cubs hat. Life will have come full circle. Just as you hated the Yankees before the Red Sox, and just like you now hate the Red Sox, the 100 year old Phoenix will rise from the flames to become the NEW Cubs. We will be the Red Sox of the future. You will see a rise in coverage of the Cubs, they will become the team that ESPN plays on Sunday night, and on the following Monday night game. To top it all off, John Kruk will sing the “Go Cubs Go” song after a meaningless victory on Baseball Tonight. You will hear 21 to 28 year old boys jumping up and down at your pub screaming while you try to ignore them after a Cubs victory in May. May for chrissakes! There will be a new un-holy triumvirate of Yankees-Boston-Chicago baseball coverage. You’ll go to a game sometime in the future, you get to your seat and be completely surrounded by blue pinstripes. By the 4th inning you will contemplate a fisticuffs with three Cubs fans because they are rowdy and swearing around your child. You will despise our kind. I'm on your side dude. I can’t blame you. I hate them too. I hate them more than you do. They don’t even know who Fergie Jenkins is. They aren’t outraged that Ron Santo isn’t in the hall of fame. They think Mark Grace played his entire career with the D-backs, and they certainly don’t understand why Grace is god in inner Cub circles. Sure, they wear their Wood jerseys every Cubs game but didn’t go through the heartache that true Cubs fans did when both him and Prior had their season after season injuries. They weren’t here for all of the bad years. They weren’t there when the Cubs were 5 outs from going to the World Series in 2003. They think that Brock for Broglio is a campaign slogan. THEY WEREN’T EVEN HERE FOR THE DUSTY YEARS! But the two things that pisses me off the most about all of these new future fake fans of my team is that they didn’t have to shoulder the pain and humiliation of season after season of heartache, and they didn’t have to listen to other fans ask in humor when the last time your team won a World Series. Now you’re going to lump me in with them, and even though I was an intolerable asshole before (for completely different reasons) I will now be an asshole because of them. Somehow, inexplicably, even as we close in on a goal we haven’t achieved in a century, I shudder at the thought.

So this year could be the year, but if you’re a laissez-faire baseball fan you better hope it isn’t, because you’re gonna hate us soon.