Life as Defined by the Cubs and Baseball at Wrigley

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.

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