I love to play and watch baseball, but I've never been that hot on the hype of professional sports in general. To me it feels like a meticulously marketed pseudo-nationalistic club whose ticket to entry is overpriced official merch, the purpose of which is to make the sofas of the owners, managers and players a little more plush. Yet here I am, a Canadian, plane ticket in hand to Chicago so I can hopefully take in some of the excitement around the Cubs in the championship series. How did this happen?
It's a story so familiar in Chicago it's almost cliché. My father was a Cubs fan who never saw them win a world series. His father was a Cubs fan who also never saw them win a world series. Each fan's circumstances are slightly different - there may be more generations or fewer, you may substitute 'grandfather' with 'grandmother' or 'uncle', but there are enough of us out there to fill a dozen Wrigley stadiums. What binds us all together is a cross-generational legacy of long-suffering.
It started for my family innocently enough. My grandfather's cousins would come up from Chicago for visits to 'the bush' in Northern Ontario and play pickup baseball. In the '20s the Cubs would have been only just over a decade removed from their last world championship, and so my Chicaco cousins' affinity for the team would have transferred easily to my grandfather. Cue the long-suffering.
The year before my father was born, the Cubs finally made it back to the world series in 1945 where they lost in game 7 at Wrigley to the Detroit Tigers. I can't be sure exactly how it happened, but at some point my dad adopted the team of his father. Along with this came all of the expectations for a Cubs championship, a burden for two carried alone by my father after my grandfather died.
I have a much clearer idea of how the Cubs were passed along to me. When I was young I asked my dad who his favourite baseball team was, and he replied 'the Cubs'. This was a bit surprising since he never really showed off his Cubs affinity, he didn't own a Cubs cap or jersey, and he never really talked about the Cubs at all. Still, I basically said to myself at that point, 'well then, I guess I'm a Cubs fan too'.
For me, being a Cubs fan goes deeper than just choosing a team to support and following their progress through the season. It's in me. In fact, I can't recall a time after that conversation with my dad when I would have ever claimed to not be a Cubs fan. Sure, I enjoyed watching the Red Sox break the 'curse of the Bambino' and yes, I enjoy when the Blue Jays do well. But when it comes right down to it, you know who I'm rooting for. I can no more change my allegiance than I can change my nationality. I'm a Cubs fan because my dad was a Cubs fan, and he was a Cubs fan because his dad was one.
Of course, there are plenty of people who have passed down their affiliation to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What makes the Cubs so special is that our long-suffering is shared. If my grandfather had been a Yankees fan instead, it would be easy to think of 'my grandfather's Yankees' as a different team from 'my Yankees'. When a team wins a championship, expectations are fulfilled and affiliations have a chance to reset. But, 'my grandfather's Cubs' are 'my Cubs'. We suffer the same team. The expectations of my grandfather, passed to my father, are passed down to me and they sit three generations deep. All for the same team. Our Cubs.
There is a lot of emotion in this, understand. This link, this thread of shared long-suffering has tremendous baggage attached to it. Memories of days in the sun with my father catching each other's bullpens, and memories my father too had of his father - filtered down to just the good ones with the smell of grass and leather. Though I have strong personal memories of my dad, there are very few links that I have back to my grandfather whom I hardly knew. These Cubs though, this shared love of a team from a city in which none of us has ever lived, is one of those threads.
So I'm going to Chicago to maybe experience game 6 and 7 of the NLCS. I don't of course have a ticket to see a game from inside Wrigley (there are a lot of us, remember!) but my father and grandfather will be watching the Cubs through my eyes from the inside of sports bars and along Addison and Sheffield. And if the Cubs finally do win that World Series championship, the cheers of all of the long-suffering fans in Wrigley will mix with the cheers of the spirits of their ancestors, and it will be something to behold.
