100 Years of Misery

My dad, who is the biggest St. Louis Cardinals fan in the world, introduced me to the game of baseball at a very young age. I thanked him by pledging my allegiance to the Cardinals arch-rival, the Chicago Cubs.

Rooting for the Cubs came so easily to me. When cable TV came to my town, they were always on TV. I'd bust out of school and rush home to watch the last 3 or 4 innings and hear Harry Caray and Steve Stone break down the game. Harry and Steve were generally not very happy during the telecasts, because the Northsiders were pretty lousy.

Throughout my childhood, the Cubs' futility was one of those constants that helped assure a young boy in Iowa that there was order in the world. You could always depend on the Cubs. Always, that is, until 1984, when a young 2nd baseman named Ryne Sandberg came in and wrecked everything.

In 1984, I was a freshman at the University of Iowa, and I was still a rabid Cubs fan. All the Cub fans knew that the Sandberg kid was going to be good as soon as he joined the club in '82, but he was just one guy, as Dad reminded me, and it was still the Cubs. After all, they traded future Hall of Fame reliever Bruce Sutter away (to the Cardlinals no less), and got somebody named Leon Durham in return. With a roster full of has-beens and never-will-be's surrounding Ryno, most observers had no reason to believe that this team with one post-season appearance since World War II wouldn't be mathematically eliminated by Labor Day.

But then something bizarre happened. Something that had never happened for any sustained period in my lifetime. The Cubs started playing with skill. Veterans Ron Cey, Larry Bowa and Gary Matthews blended with younger guys Bob Dernier and Jody Davis. Closer Lee Smith was lights out and made us all forget about Bruce Sutter very quickly. Leon Durham was so good that the Cubs traded Bill Buckner to Boston, where he would make some history of his own a couple of years later. Meanwhile, Ryne Sandberg was having a season that would define his career. Everything, literally everything, was working, so how were the Cubbies going to screw this up?

On June 13, two days before the trading deadline, the Chicago Cubs were in first place, but needed to shore up the starting pitching if they were going to get through the dog days of summer. Prospects Mel Hall and Joe Carter were sent to Cleveland for righthander Rick Sutcliffe. A lot of Cub fans, including me, thought the Cubs gave up too much for a guy who was 4-5 with the Indians. Finally, we thought, the Cubs screwed the pooch, the spell broken, order restored.

Wrong. It went the other way. The Cubs caught fire after the Sutcliffe trade, winning 32 of 46 games during one stretch, including a thriller on June 23 where Sandberg homered twice off Bruce Sutter to beat the Cardinals 12-11. Sutcliffe went 13-1 in Cub pinstripes and was borderline unhittable. The Cubs went 18-10 in July, 20-10 in August, and on a cool September night in Pittsburgh, they clinched the National League Eastern Division. My beloved Cubs were 3 wins away from the World Series, and the only thing standing in the way were the San Diego Padres.

It was only after the Cubs clinched that I started to visualize what I hoped would happen next: Cubs sweep Padres and take the National League Pennant, I run through the streets screaming "THE CUBS WIN THE PENNANT!", something I had been waiting to do for most of my short life. Gratuitous abuse of alchohol, a lifestyle I discovered earlier in my college career, would almost certainly follow.

As I recall, winning the World Series wasn't even on the radar. The American League Champion Detroit Tigers, winners of 35 of their first 40 games that season, appeared invincible to me and most observers. So all I wanted was to get past the Padres and take our best shot the Motor City Kitties. Win or lose, flying the "National League Champions" flag over Wrigley for the first time since 1945 sounded pretty good to me, and certainly no team in those ghastly brown and yellow uniforms could stop us.

The first two games of the best of 5 National League Championship series were like a dream. Bobby Dernier led off Game 1 with a home run, Sutcliffe himself launched one onto Sheffield Avenue and shut out the Padres 13-0. In Game 2, lefty Steve Trout was sharp and the Cubs won again 4-2.

In my dorm room, watching the games on the TV my grandparents bought the day the astronauts landed on the moon in 1969 (the last year the Cubs were in the playoffs), I was beside myself. I imagined what it was like in Wrigley as they sent the boys off after the Game 2 victory. The feeling was overwhelming: this was the year. Padres are COOKED. Jinx over. Bring on the Tigers. It was almost too easy.

The Cubs left town with a very simple mission: win 1 out of the next 3 in San Diego, win the pennant, end the drought, but everybody knows what happens next. Padres take Game 3, Garvey homers in the 9th to tie series, Cubs blow a 3-0 lead in Game 5, Leon Durham makes 2 errors in a 4 run 7th, Padres never look back. Cubs lose, order restored.

Years later, I still cannot define with words the heartache I felt in the moments after Game 5. What I can tell you is that it has never been the same with me and the Cubs after that. I am and always shall be a fan, but after 1984, I have never pushed in my whole stack of chips on the Northsiders. So while I can tell you that it stung when the Giants and Will Clark did them in 5 years later in the NLCS, I lived. The playoff failure in '98? No sweat. The Steve Bartman Debacle of 2003? Handled it. And in 2008, with the Cubs galloping to the best record in the National League and getting swept (SWEPT!) by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Division Series, I watched quietly, shook my head and shut off the TV.

Nothing lasts anymore, but the Cubs have given us all a great gift that has endured 100 years: the rock steady feeling that in these uncertain times, there are a handful of things that you can count on. The Coyote never gets the Road Runner, James Bond always gets the girl and the Cubs will always find a way to spit out the bit. Reliable as the tides, predictable as a Disney movie. Someday the curse will end, and if I'm alive and still able, I will update the blog, but until then......