It hurts. Yes, it hurts. There is always next year; there is always next century. Yes, it hurts.
However...
As an American expat, as a North Side expat, who moved from Chicago to Europe in the late '70s, when I am asked about the United States and what it is like to live in the States, I almost invariably end up describing what it is like to sit way up above first base in Wrigley Field and watch a Cubs game. If there is one thing I really miss after all these years, it is a certain atmosphere only found along the lakefront, a smell of popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, the cry of the hawkers, the tarred smell of the El tracks when the heat goes up, the boats out on the lake, the wind blowing in, and the long slow ceremony known as baseball. Baseball—a mixture of team effort and the simultaneous duel between pitcher and batter, arcane rules, lazy afternoons, and shrine of tradition—is a key to understanding who I am and what America is.
They can't take this from the people on the North Side, so, win or lose, you have been blessed.
2 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment
Sam Wenk 9 months ago
The best part is, the season starts over and you can experience all those emotions once again. Just a few more months until pitchers and catchers report!
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Anon 9 months ago
Yup, the countdown has started, and before you know it, spring training will have started. There has always been something special about the weeks preceding the season.
While the baseball experience can be used to help define what is special about life in Chicago and the US, just like Football (Soccer) defining a large part of local culture in cities like Dortmund, Germany or Manchester, England, we mustn't forget that life is much too complex to be fully described using sports as a mirror.
BTW: Thanks for the *first* comment to my *first* short article.
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