103 years is a long time. Generations come and go, children are born and people die. Relationships are started and lost. A lot can happen over the course of more than ten decades. Watching ESPN’s Catching Hell, a film about Steve Bartman, the infamous fan who “cost the Chicago Cubs a championship” (a point which is arguable) in 2003, was fairly disheartening. Even more so, it wasn’t for the reason you’d think.
In full disclosure, I’m not a baseball fan. In fact, I despise it. If it weren’t for my passion for drinking beers outside and away from the television in the summer, baseball would have zero value to me. In Carbaugh’s America the sport would be banished, save for some radical rule changes. However, when considering the sporting health of a city it is near impossible to consider only one sport and one team.
Chicago currently has five teams for four main sports leagues in this country: the Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Bears and Blackhawks. Over the course of the last 103 years the city of Chicago has won 22 titles. That’s one championship every 4.68 years. It’s not exactly Buffalo.
“You don’t get it”.
That’s what I’m told, over and over again, even by my best friend who is a Cubs fan. My response?
“No, you don’t get it”.
The city of Chicago has received so much in the sporting world. One of their teams swept the World Series, their football team made their own music video and oh, did I mention that they were able to experience the greatest basketball player of all-time?
Let’s not make this out to be anything other than it is: Chicago is blessed. Michael Jordan’s six championships are something that have never been equaled since and he is unlikely to be unseated from his throne upon the sporting world in his or my lifetime.
Catching Hell does a good job of showing just how silly hating someone like Steve Bartman is when you’ve got a clear understanding of just what has happened to a man’s real life over a game you can play while drunk. How silly is it that an entire city asks for universal empathy when the trophy hall of the United Center looks like Mr. T’s vanity bureau?
Even if you’re a Cub fan and don’t like the Bulls, Bears or Blackhawks, how could you possibly be so inconceivably selfish to not partake in the joy of ultimate victory seen in the faces of your city’s compatriots? What gives you the right to sit and complain about rules which baseball itself — the most lax, good ol’ boy rulebook in professional sports — fully embraces? That the Cubs haven’t won a championship in over a hundred years is no concern to me, and it shouldn’t be to anyone else.
Let’s all stop crying for Chicago. If one town has Ferris Buhler, Christopher Nolan, Oprah and Michael Jordan walking around things can’t be in too bad of shape. Or, I’ll tell you what: Portland can take Jordan in 1984 and the Cubs can have a World Series in 1945 and 2003. Fair?
That’s what I thought.
Dane Carbaugh is a published research author and can be found writing about the NBA all over the Internet. He can be found on Twitter at @DaneCarbaugh
