Check on your Cubs Fans Friends Tonight, They Aren’t Doing Well

There is a balance in sport. When you are a fan of a team, emotions will always enter the equation. Whether you’re mad about a bad call, celebrating a huge win, or mourning the trades of an entire Chicago Cubs roster. After all, to be a fan means you are a fanatic. To be a fanatic, it means you display excessive zeal for something. To express excessive zeal, it means you’re displaying a high amount of emotion. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that “fans” have an emotional response to trading away their favorite player.

That is what the Cubs did today. If you asked 100 people, a third of them would say Kris Bryant is their favorite, a third would say Anthony Rizzo, and a third would declare Javier Baez as their favorite (that last person can’t decide among the three, which honestly is likely higher than just one person, but you get it). So when you trade someone’s favorite player, the team you are expressing excessive zeal for trades a player you display excessive zeal for – you’re naturally going to get a fanatical response.

That response might not make sense. That response might be a middle finger to the general manager (errr… team president) or a mostly incoherent social media post that asks for horrible things to those involved. This is part of being fanatical. This is part of being a fan.

Sure, you might understand the why’s, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have this ridiculous outburst nonetheless.

When I was 24, my family had three cats. All three were pretty old, and if I were to be honest, none of them were in great health. One would fall down while standing up, one had some tumors, and one started with the seizures (none of them were in pain at the time). When the seizures became fairly uncontrollable, my parents took her in. There was an expectation that they were going to have to put her down. It was a very sad day, and there was a part of you that hoped the vet had some miracle drug that would fix her.

Well, a few hours later my parents came home with three shoe boxes. Inside the three shoeboxes were the lifeless corpses of my family’s three cats. Turns out, the vet had a three-for-one special and my mom – who couldn’t turn down a sale – brought them all in.

That is what Jed Hoyer did to the Chicago Cubs fanbase today. He collectively took all our cats to the vet and put them down, because, “there was no reason to go half-way.” I have been waiting 19 years to learn what that lesson my parents were teaching us that day, I finally found it, thanks ma!

See, whenever fans tried to express their sadness over the idea of the Cubs trading away their favorite players, the players that we watched end a 108-year drought, and due to social media – the players we felt closest to, there were some fans that told us we were wrong for feeling what we feel. They would spit some “realism” on us, suggesting that this is the right thing for the growth of the organization and to build whatever is next.

This is, we all know that. We all understand that since 2017, things just weren’t the same. The offense famously broke in 2017, there weren’t changes to that broken offense in 2018 or 19. There still wasn’t a change in 2020 – but that same broke offense continued to be trotted out there. We knew this roster needed to be, and I hate to say it, put to sleep.

But it is ok for us not to like it. It is ok for us to not enjoy this happening one-after-another while we kept refreshing Twitter hoping that every trade that was announced didn’t have a blue checkmark next to the name.

See, a huge thing that changed in 2015 and 2016, when it was evident that the Cubs would compete for, and win a championship, was the education of the Cubs fan. We began to understand this game more and from losing all-time greats like Greg Maddux, we knew the business side of this game even more.

So we know that the Cubs needed to make a change to this roster. They needed to shake things up. This isn’t a knock-on heroes like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, or Javier Baez, but the organization needed a fresh coat of paint to ensure the future was as bright as the recent past. We know that the Cubs did pretty well in receiving higher than expected prospects in return for their guys (outside perhaps Bryant), and we understand the importance of having a healthy minor league system.

So, if you tend to be a “realist” let’s leave the overly emotional alone for a bit. They’re working through things and I promise you, they understand the why’s. We don’t need someone to tell us the why’s right now, we need that friend that is down to go egg a house, break stuff, scream into the moon, and down a bottle of Jack right now. We’ll be back in it. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not by the end of the weekend. But we’ll be back in it screaming to anyone that will listen that Brennen Davis is the best player in the Cubs organization, right now. Just like we did with Kris Bryant in 2014.