There’s no way to calculate how many baseball games I’ve played in or watched in my 37 years — and, to be fair, even when I was on the roster I watched more than I played — but suffice it to say I can see a 6-4-3 double play as it develops.
So when Yasiel Puig hit a ground ball Saturday evening, as soon the producer switched to a camera showing Addison Russell sizing up the play I found myself saying, “That’s it.” Sure enough, Russell fielded the ball cleanly, flipped to second where Javier Baez caught the toss and fired it to Anthony Rizzo at first base, immediately before Puig’s foot hit the bag. Just like that, the Chicago Cubs eliminated the Los Angeles Dodgers, won the National League Championship Series and will be playing in the World Series for the first time since 1945.
My inclination is to keep writing clinical things — analyzing the baseball side of things and pretending like the next week will primarily be about whether the Cubs offense can make enough noise against Cleveland’s starters to neutralize the Indians’ dominant bullpen, by far its biggest advantage in the series. But there are problems with that approach. Mainly, I’m nowhere near qualified to offer such commentary. There’s no shortage of outlets providing actual baseball insight. More than that, these next four to seven games are, for the vast majority of Cubs fans, completely uncharted territory.
There’s no shortage of outlets willing to go deep on the emotional issues here as well. You can’t swing a fungo bat without encountering a story about someone watching the games and thinking of their late father or grandmother, or someone writing about their foundational fan experiences, or simply listing all the Cubs greats who never got a chance to make it this far as a player or even stay alive to see the day. These are all wonderful essays, videos, etc., and I encourage anyone who needs help getting properly calibrated to dive deep into the sentiment.
I fancy myself a perceptive guy, and I think that’s one of the traits that helps me as a writer — being able to not just convey a message but to see the world with just enough of my own slant to perhaps shed a new light and be entertaining in the process. But increasingly, I find my perception is that my own viewpoint is not especially unique and that limits my desire to sit at the keyboard and let the stuff in my brain out onto the screen.
Lots of people are dads. Tons of us have jobs. Plenty have, like I did last month, have knee surgery. We bought a new (to us but really very old) house this year, and there are entire television networks devoted to telling such stories. There are, quite literally, millions of Chicago Cubs fans, and looking at the tens of thousands packed into Wrigley Field and the surrounding neighborhood last weekend, while a completely delightful television experience, ultimately leads to the nagging thought: “Hey, what’s so special about you?”
Well, nothing, really. My parents are excited to see all this as well, but my dad grew up a Milwaukee Braves fan. My younger brother and I have always loved the Cubs, but I’m 37 and he’s 31. This has been a long time coming for us, but there are fans who have been waiting to see the Cubs in the World Series twice as long as we’ve been alive, and then some. It’s been wonderfully fun to have friends from various points of my life reach out to share their excitement. Living a few dozen miles north of the city we’re getting to see all the news coverage, and everywhere we turn there’s Cubs shirts, hats, car flags, window stickers and so on. I never stop to wonder if these are bandwagon fans or lifelong die-hards, it’s just fun to be caught up in the enthusiasm.
Me in the summer of 1988. The Cubs finished 77-85, 24 games out of first in the National League East.
All of which is to say there are millions of people excited about the Series and therefore millions of stories about why they’re excited, what it means to root for this team, what lengths we’ll go to in order to not miss a single pitch, which articles of clothing we consider lucky, how young our children were when they mastered the lyrics to “Go Cubs Go” and which relatives ashes we hope to one day sprinkle on the Wrigley Field ivy. And again, I absolutely love reading and hearing these stories. In a way, they belong to all of us, even (perhaps especially) the ones from complete strangers.
Since there’s so many amazing narratives out there for the consuming, and since I don’t really have anything that sets me apart, I’m just choosing to share my happiness. The Cubs have already done something I’ve never seen before, something I more than once thought would never happen. And while the biggest item to check off the list remains four wins away, I don’t think I’ll be emotionally devastated if it doesn’t happen this year. My Christmas list has already been distilled to external hard drive, fuzzy socks and any conceivable item bearing the words “Cubs” and “World Series.”
I get to — we all get to — watch the Chicago Cubs play in the World Series. For real. They might even win the darn thing. Either way, what it means to be a Cubs fan has already changed and I can’t stop smiling. Baseball is just a distraction from real life, and this year it’s been a very happy distraction. Maybe I’m just writing all these things on a Monday because on Tuesday I will be an anxious ball of nauseous nerves. Maybe I’m more well adjusted than I give myself credit for. Whatever actually happens, I’ve lived my whole baseball fan life just hoping to get where we are right now, and now that it’s finally here I find words aren’t sufficient. And that’s OK — the best things in life have always been that way. Go Cubs Go.