At the risk of being troll-rated by our eponymous host, I’m using my first diary to put forth, succinctly, the following proposition:
Rooting for the Chicago cubs is not only stupid, it’s un-American.
Why? Follow me below the fold:
Full disclosure: I am a South Sider. South Side Irish, if you must know. Which means I have two favorite baseball teams: the White Sox, and whoever’s playing the cubs (note that I will not capitalize their name). Pretty much everything about the cubs drives me nuts: their stupid Yuppie fans who go to the games not so much to see baseball as to get drunk, and who couldn’t tell a slider from a slyder; their utterly insipid hug-a-bear nickname, "cubbies" (seriously: name me one other major league ballclub whose fans consistently use a diminutive of its team nickname).
Mostly, though, I hate the fact that their fans love them, not despite the fact that they lose, but because of it.
I can’t stress this enough. White Sox fans used to suffer in silence, at least until our team won a little post-season tournament a couple of years ago that you may have heard about. Red Sox fans used to whinge incessantly about their "curse," until they, too, won that same post-season tournament. The difference, though, is that Sox fans (Red or White) support their teams despite their losing ways. Cubs fans, on the other hand, support their baby bears because they lose. They celebrate their team’s futility. Their team has an identity, and that’s the Loveable Losers. Which all fits nicely into the whole dumb "cubbies" thing – ooooh, look at them! They’re so cuuuute! They go out and lose, and then we all go to the Cubby Bear bar (yecch!) to drown our sorrows! Awwwww!
In fact, as the author of the linked article above suggests, if the cubs actually started winning (science fiction, I know, but grant the premise for the purpose of argument), their fan base would probably dry up. That’s just crazy as a soup sandwich, I don’t care where you’re from.
Hey, it’s a free country. Root for losers all you want. But realize what you’re doing, cubs fans. Nothing less than undermining what this country is supposed to stand for.
You root for a team that’s gone 99 years (and counting) without winning a World Series. You reward this breathtaking streak of futility with your time, your unquestioning loyalty, and your ticket-buying and merchandise-purchasing dollars. How is this any different than, oh I don’t know, paying a catastrophically underperforming CEO millions of dollars? Or, to go it one further, how far a walk is it from cheering on perennial losers to continuing to fund a war that seemingly has no end game and no quantifiable victory in sight? We reward success in this country, dammit, and we’re supposed to punish abject failure. Unless it takes place at 1060 West Addison in Chicago, apparently.
But perhaps I’m too harsh. After all, the late Bill Wrigley had the good taste and sense not to don a flight suit in 1945 (the last time the cubs won the NL pennant) and proclaim, "Mission Accomplished."
That aside, just remember, cubs fans: you're enablers. You're rewarding failure. Look around at the world today and tell me how that's a good thing.