One Last Chance for Chicago Cubs

Sure, he would check a box score whenever he happened across a sports page in McDonald’s, but he could hardly call himself a fan.

Other sports and sporty girls were better at keeping his attention. All those years of hopeful build-up, soon followed by heart-breaking frustration and letdown, too closely mirrored his experiences with the opposite sex to be positively formative.

Years later, there was a renewed interest in a Dominican home-run hitter chasing history, until...well we won’t re-hash all that...too painful.

A few more years down the road found him spending a nostalgic day sorting out those baseball-card albums, painfully deciding what put into his parents’ dumpster and what would just end up gathering more dust in the garage of his first home.

Still later, the Cubs, and unfortunately Major League Baseball, lost him as a fan forever when even Boston won a World Series.

That boy now has four kids of his own and hasn’t watched an entire baseball game in years. Although he has made his living by working in various sports industries, baseball has never been one of them.

He signs his kids up for soccer and golf every spring instead of little-league baseball. He couldn’t even find his old ball glove when the chef at his work signed him up for the company softball team.

He decided, years ago, that like a drug addict, Chicago needed every single one of their co-dependent fans to withdraw all love and support in order to allow the franchise to finally hit rock-bottom.

Ideally, for the Cubs team, they might finally accept reality and maybe Mark Cuban or someone who actually wants to win will give the franchise a fresh start. Just like an intervention, without the finality of this profoundly depressing notion, nothing would really be done to turn around the organization.

Then, about a month ago, he accidentally DVR’d Baseball Tonight instead of a college football game. The segment opened with a story about Alfonso Soriano and a Japanese right fielder, also with an unpronounceable name. It went on to talk about a recent no-hitter by the Cubs' ace starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano.

Before he could stop and delete this mistake, a long-ago and deeply ingrained memory response flashed across the nostalgia lobe of his brain. He couldn’t immediately care though, due to an even stronger defense mechanism, constructed of scar tissue to avoid more pain, which halted that foolish instinct.

He didn't choose this life or this team. He really had no chance; WGN was his only option.

Now, kids can not only choose from way too many televised games, but they also can follow any game or team online. It is encouraging to know that through technology, this terrible cycle of fan abuse can end.

You could call him a fair-weather fan of the Cubs, but that would be like calling Tina Turner a fair-weather wife of Ike.

Just like that perpetually abused spouse, he will be back for the playoffs just this one more time, with the hope that things really have changed. 

This time around, there is much more at stake.

This time he will be watching it with his seven-year-old son.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?