October 3, 2007
Talking about high hopes
That unfamiliar time of year has just rolled round when wearing blue can be dangerous for your heart, commotion abounds and green walls can turn red. Wonders are about to happen and we’re on the verge of either a party not seen for a century or mass expressions of a deep and public despair. Yes, it’s that post-season baseball induced extension of summer that is still unfamiliar to the north side of Chicago.
Sure, it’s been just four years since the last time the Cubs went to the playoffs, but this is still a far from regular occurrence around these parts. You see, being a Cubs fan means coming to an understanding with an annual heartbreak amidst intermittent bouts of joy, anger, frustration, contentment and amazement. When they make the playoffs and get tantalizingly close to ending their 99 year World Series title deficiency, everything gets that much more blown out of proportion, especially the risks one takes when signing on as a Cubs fan.
Normally the summer starts off in mid March with a sense of overconfidence; inflated to different degrees depending on the squad that year. As the season opens in April, the hopes are always high, but they’re quickly recalibrated based on the team’s early play. Most of the time we quickly learn to find other pursuits upon which to focus during the late summer months of August, July and June. But every so often (now five times in my lifetime) the team claws its way out of the regular season and the top half of Chicago has a reason to watch the playoffs.
Of course we’re excited and hopeful that each time it will turn out to be that fabled “next year” and thus far, each time I’ve had my heartbroken in a slightly different way, and the closer they’ve come to even winning the National League (which they’ve haven’t achieved since 1945), the more painful the eventual fall. But each time, I’m back for another round, hoping to finally see this team relieve themselves of the burden this city has helped them carry for now nearly a full century.
The latest attempt at finally making it “this year” begins in a few hours and baseball’s inherent anticipation with only grow more intense with each pitch of the game. Just like at the beginning of the season my hopes are as high as my trepidations. Here’s to hoping the hope win out for once.