Cubs Exorcising All of the Demons
108 Years, curses, superstitions, scapegoats, hell – even goats. There was a lot of weight on the Chicago Cubs in 2016 and their fans. This weight was so heavy that a lot of the fanbase held the cursed franchise as a personality trait, something that made them who they are. I am a hazel-eyed, 5’10”, athletically built (ok, maybe in my earlier 20’s) male who waited for the other shoe to drop in a Cubs playoff series.
This isn’t to say that we aren’t believers, we are, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent multiple thousands of dollars on Cubs playoff gear and tickets during the 2016 run. But for a lot of us, we hadn’t lost the personality trait of, “what’s going to happen next?” when it comes to the Cubs and playoff baseball. This isn’t uncommon.
This isn’t uncommon. Boston Red Sox fans had mentioned that this was the most difficult part of watching baseball after they had won the World Series in 2004, their first in 86 years. They mention how the game becomes different for them, and how the first couple years after the win they had a hard time coping with being a perennial winner – until after the 2007 championship. That was the turning point in which that feeling of despair left. When they stopped waiting for something to happen and watched the game like a, like a normal baseball fan.
According to Red Sox fan, and writer for Slate, Seth Stevenson, it changed forever.
I wouldn’t really want to go back to how it was before 2004, although I do miss it sometimes. Watching the pre-2004 Red Sox was a completely different kind of fandom. It was like opera. It was life or death for me. I somehow felt like I couldn’t be a full person or a restful person until they won the World Series. After 2004, it was not that life-or-death feeling. It was not entwined with who I am as a person. It was just like watching baseball. I miss that passion, I miss that life-or-death, that whole-body feeling I used to have watching baseball. But it was kind of a relief to be honest, to just watch my team like a fan of any other team, to just be happy when they won and disappointed when they lost.
But here Chicago Cubs fans sit, just 11 months after the impossible happened. 11 months into our collective title defense. 11 months and we all have so many different thoughts and feelings on what might happen in game five of the NLDS. We sat and watched six months of this season with the story no longer being the Cubs, but rather the LA Dodgers or the Cleveland Indians. We have now seen our 2016 dance partner unexpectedly knocked out of the playoffs and are left to wonder, what if that other shoe drops?
One day, sooner than later, we might be able to just watch the ballgame, but this is all still too new and too fresh. It doesn’t make us any more or less of a fan when we watch with one eye closed, it just means part of what made us who we are, hasn’t fully been exorcised. Yet.
Shouldn’t it be “Exorcising”?