The 2015 Cubs

I know the numbers now without looking, but I still check them out every morning when I get the Tribune off the driveway.  I could view them online but I want to see them on paper, hold them in my hands, lay them on the counter by my coffee cup so I can pick them up and read the numbers again.  It’s the Major League Baseball standings. 

The best baseball in the country is being played in the Midwest.  Kansas City’s Royals are leading the Central division in the American League by 11 ½ games with a record of 66 wins and 54 losses.  The best team in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals, leads the National League Central with a whopping big winning percentage of .640 and a record of 71-40.   The Pittsburgh Pirates are chasing them, 5 ½ games back, with a record of 64-44. 

The next best team in baseball?  Care to guess?  It’s a tie.  Los Angeles, with a winning percentage of .564, leads the Western division of the National League by 3 ½ games over last year’s World Series Champion San Francisco Giants.  Tied with them, holding an identical record, are the Chicago Cubs.  The Chicago Cubs are 14 games over .500 with a record of 62 wins and 48 losses.  The Chicago Cubs own the fourth best record in Major League baseball and the date is August 10, 2015.  The Chicago Cubs.

If the Cubs were playing on the coast, East or West divisions of either league, they would be leading or tied for the division lead.  The Cubs have a chance to make the playoffs.  A good chance.  Do you know how difficult it is to even think, that let alone write it?

A true Cub fans is a guy with an old girlfriend who wants to get back together, but he can’t bring himself to think about it because she’s broken his heart so many times.  Too many times.  He sees her at a bar.  She looks good, her hair different, maybe lost a little weight.  She smiles at him.  He looks away, doing everything he can to keep that feeling from seeping back into his heart.  You know that feeling.

“Maybe I do still care for her.  Maybe it could work out.”

He looks back. She’s still smiling.  He looks hard at himself in the bar behind the mirror, a reflection of his face hanging just above the whiskey bottles, and stares into his own tormented eyes. 

“Don’t do it,” he begs himself.  “She’s trouble.”

 He pays for his beer and leaves, not looking back.

“I gotta protect myself,” he thinks.  “Keep my distance.” He’s talking about distance in his heart.

That’s how I felt last week when the Cubs were swept by the lowly Philadelphia Phillies (45-67).  They are 14 ½ games behind the New York Mets and going nowhere. 

“It’s going to happen,” I told myself silently.  I didn’t want to give up hope in front of my friends and family but I felt it.   The dread, the unbounded pessimism known only to true Cub fans. The personal private heartbreak of knowing that your team, your Dad’s team, the team that last won a World Series in 1908, the year before Dad was born, was about to fold.  How many times have you seen them fall apart?  Can you bear to watch them do it again?

“Get it over with,” you find yourself thinking.  “Lose ten.  Eliminate yourself mathematically and let me go.”  But you can’t deny the feeling.  You still care.

Love is a complicated thing.  So is being a Cub fan.  Just like you can’t live without love, neither can you live without hope.  The standings don’t lie.  It’s August 10^th and the Cubs are 14 games over .500.  There are 57 games yet to be played.  This 2015 Cub team has a chance to do something.  Screw the past.  Go ahead.  Let your heart go.  This time you might get lucky.