Apparently, it’s not enough that the Cubs’ 100-year countdown with no title passed last year with only a flicker in the playoffs.
Imagine, 100 years come and gone, the autotext story hopefully erased from most hapless writers’ laptop
s – and 2009 marks just another year in baseball for one of the league’s most beloved, hated, and visible franchises.
Maybe, even, with the lapse of 100 years, all this curse-schmurse nonsense that insults the lot of us Cubs fans and infuriates us real fans to no end – maybe it all could go away. After all, we’re no less tortured than Giants or Indians fans, and as bad as baseball gets – and as mad as we get – someday they’re winning it. Who knows when? And all that billy goat and hex and karma stuff could just expire and we could join the angst of every other baseball team on the planet.
Nope.
Grasping at straws, the nation’s media prefers instead to pounce on a hackneyed storyline, emanating from 1969, when a black cat ran on the field of Shea Stadium, and the Cubs honked the division.
Last night, hosting Cincinnati, an intrepid, spotted white and grey stray cat suddenly launched itself onto Wrigley Field, bursting over the rail and traipsing through the outfield, prompting hundreds of chortling sportswriters to cite their beloved imaginary curse. (And in Boston, Dan Schaugnessy wistfully remembered his gravy train.)
Ridiculous. First, the feline wasn’t even a black cat. Second, like I mentioned, this superstition stuff is getting real old. Third, who’s to say the cat isn’t just a huge Cubs fan? Most of them are (Above, right.). How is this a problem?
For crying out loud, across town the Sox deal with tatted-up meth addicts charging pitching coaches – yet on the North Side we’re supposed to believe a harmless kitty is the next sign of our own apocalypse?
Fine, whatever. You want to believe a stray cat foretells bad luck, go right the fuck ahead. Excuse me while I revel in my rationalism. (Dons Cubs do-rag and Angel Pagan jersey before Wednesday night’s game. Swigs Old Style. Knocks three times on Jerome Walton poster.)
