No matter how much adulting has pulled me away from the intensity of my sports obsessions, I've continued to follow the Cubs, maybe even more than I ever have. Following the fall from back-to-back division championships, down into the doldrums, and back out again, I never scaled back on the Cubs. I even bought MLB.TV subscriptions, despite being a huge cheapskate, to watch the Cubs with a ridiculous time difference while living abroad in 2010 and 2011-12. I remained obsessed with minor league prospects, with trade deadline dumps and adds, and with the ever so warm-and-cozy Hot Stove of baseball's offseason.
From the first games at Wrigley, to my 15 straight summers of park district tee-ball and baseball, to the semi-daily phone calls from my late grandpa checking which station the Cubs were on that day, to the 18 years growing up in the northwest suburbs and my 4 years back here as a north-side city-dweller, the Cubs have always captivated me in a different way.
I believe that sports are amazingly formative because of how deeply and broadly they go. While competition and triumph are thrilling, addicting, and tantalizing, it's the constants of sports that underpin those things that make sports most compelling. No matter your team's success or lack thereof in wins and losses, sports demand great character, expose deficits in it, and compel one to constant attention and improvement.
Teamwork. Accountability. Responsibility. Effort. Goals. Dedication. Hope. Hope.
Hope. No matter what your talent level or your team's talent level is, you have to believe that your guys can overcome any deficit by determination and teamwork. Otherwise, your lack of will alone could lose you the game and make your season's struggles interminable. A player on a freshmen basketball team I coached once told his teammates, when he thought coaches weren't listening, that they would lose 100-10 against what was sure to be a tough opponent; you bet we got blown out that day.
Hope. As a kid playing baseball, I was on some BAD teams. In 3rd grade, we went 2-11; in 4th grade, we were 1-12; in 6th grade, we were 0-13. (How do you remember that, Dan?! Easy, I love sports.) The crazy thing with all of those teams was that, even though our regular season record labeled us as an easy win and a beatable team, all three of those teams won their first playoff game in the city tournament. Eventually, I was on better teams and experienced wider success, but those teams showed me that you play hard, take advantage of every opportunity, and try to play your best when it matters most.
Talk about transferable skills. Hope.
As a kid growing up as a Cubs fan, 1998 was just exciting for me. All I knew was that the funny old man who called the games on TV had died and was helping us win the Wild Card from up in the sky; the sweep by Atlanta didn't phase me much. By 2003, I had reached the age of baseball reason. I knew our roster inside out, their strengths and weaknesses, why we acquired each player, and how they fit together on our 25-man roster. I knew that Alex Gonzalez was brought in to hit homers and turn slick double plays, so it crushed me when his error and our starting pitchers' slump did us in. By 2007 and 2008, I was all but an expert. I knew the team like my own family, and could not process how such a collection of elite hitters could slump so profoundly when it mattered most. But hope springs eternal.
Hope. I'm not afraid of bad teams. Being the anti-trend person I am, I even became a bigger Bulls fan after Jordan retired and the early 2000s rosters filled up with no-names who couldn't win games. So I easily embraced the first teams Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer cobbled together because I knew it was intentional, contrived sucking - "sucking with a purpose" as I called it. I knew what we were doing as we dumped over-the-hill veterans and one-year signees for upside talent and winning pieces - Feldman for Strop and Arrieta, Samardzija (and Hammel) for Russell, Dempster for Hendricks, Garza for Edwards and Grimm, Valbuena for Fowler, and more. I knew these deals were different than the overblown, much-hyped deals of the past, like the ones that sold high on Mark DeRosa (which netted us Chris Archer) or overpaid for Matt Garza (when we shipped Archer southeast).
Hope. It turned the corner as I sat in Wrigley on a warm summer night in 2014. Arismendy Alcantara had come up to the bigs. Kyle Hendricks took the mound. The former drove in a big run and had an impressive night, and the latter earned one of his first wins. I told my friends that this was the beginning of the turn. Baez and Soler would debut later that season. And a few months later, signing Jon Lester and Joe Maddon ratified the transition.
Hope. It longs for what is surely in the future without knowing when it's coming.
My hope was cautious. It was calm and comfortable. But it was giddy. As the 2015 Cubs got hot at just the right time, even as they passed on making splashy deadline moves, I could see the light at the end of the hope tunnel. Hope wouldn't be fulfilled that year, but I wasn't expecting it to be. I was just happy to be looking toward the light at the end of that tunnel and knowing that it was getting definitely closer.
Dispatching the Pirates confirmed the feelings, and beating the Cardinals tempted my hope to get ahead of itself. Instead, I just smiled and sat back while we took our lumps against the Mets. It wasn't time, but that time was coming. The whole point of this curve for the Cubs was to put ourselves in position for a handful of really good shots to fulfill this hope. And 2015 wasn't even good shot #1. Hope.
Hope took it easy in 2016. The Cubs led wire to wire with only one worrying lull, and even then, my hope didn't even take its feet down off the chaise. The regular season would be light and breezy; then as stories of 2003, 1984, and all the rest flooded in, hope started to shift into that uneasy position. The clinch parties passed; the playoff roster was set; the matchup came into focus.
The Giants were the first threat to hope. Could this weird believen stuff be our undoing? My hope sat up at attention but remained relaxed. Even after losing Game 3, even going late into Game 4 with bleak prospects, the pit never knotted up in the hopeful narrows of my stomach. There came the Cubs back to move us ever closer.
Next came the Dodgers, and my hope felt like all their Hollywood money couldn't stop us from doing our thing. Even at Wrigley Field, watching us lose 1-0 in an agonizingly fast Game 2, it didn't feel like it'd be our undoing.
Hope. Even as the Indians won Game 1 of the World Series, they won because they had to win it. Even as the Indians stole Game 3 and put us on the ropes in Game 4, my hope remained calm. I don't know how I never freaked out until I started to say my rationale out loud again and again. This team is different. This team is different. As I left a deflated bar, I didn't even bemoan my $20 cover charge. This team is different.
Down 3-1 in the World Series, I just felt this team is different. They don't carry the weight of 108 years in their batbags. They acknowledge it, set it aside, and play baseball the way they always have. That is how you win Game 5, 6, and 7 in the World Series. That is how you get to the do-or-die, elimination game for both teams, give up a lead late, and get it back to protect for good anyway.
Hope was fulfilled. It neared its completion as a dribbling ground ball reached the glove of a grinning third-baseman. It approached culmination as it sailed across the diamond with the ball into the glove of a first-baseman who, just minutes earlier, had stood on third base screaming with hands on head and scored the final, decisive run. It poured out as a reality in sputtery and unbridled emotions.
It was accomplished by a front office, an owner, a manager, and players who strive to always move forward and do their best in the task at hand. "Try not to suck" is the cheeky way to tell people to do their best. "Embrace the target" and "don't let the pressure exceed the pleasure" are the t-shirt slogans that make sure we have fun even when circumstances lean heavily on us.
Rather than being weighed down by the stress and pressure of all of this longing and angst and unfulfilled hope, these Cubs just played as the 2016 Cubs. And instead of turning anxiously toward the ramifications vis-a-vis their historical predecessors, they just honored them with present excellence.
Many pointed out how the Cubs' World Series win came on All Souls Day. This is the day when the Catholic Church honors the dead. We ritually and prayerfully acknowledge the lives and memories of all those who have gone before us. The day after we honor the saints - those people we believe to be already in heaven - we honor also the hopeful legacy of love that our dearly departed loved ones have left to us.Can we talk about the poetry of the Cubs finally winning the World Series on All Souls' Day?— Rob Goodale (@rgoody33) November 3, 2016
This is the hope that is fulfilled. In our Christian faith, we have faith in the Paschal Mystery of Christ and hope for the eternal life that awaits with Him. When we reach our eternal reward, our faith is realized, and our hope is fulfilled. All that awaits is love. And that is heaven.
The 2016 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs played in this vein. Rather than grieve the loss of many a game, many a season, many a snake-bitten playoff series, these Cubs simply played this season. That added up to 103 wins (though sabermetrics say they were actually unlucky! and should have won about 107!), three playoff series victories, and a championship. What better way to honor the legacy of 108 years' worth of players - players who tried hard, who succeeded in various ways, who loved this city - than to just play a season with faith and hope for its own sake and dedicate that success to them.
The sweetness of victory will endure with profound strength because it occurred in this way. Sports teach us hope when we play, when we coach, when we root. The faith we sustained has been fulfilled, and the hope to which we clung has been realized. All that remains is love.
You could see it in the players, coaches, and organizational members as they celebrated. You could see it in the live feeds of the bars and streets. You could see it at the parade and rally. You could see it as you walked the streets. And I'll bet you could feel it flowing in your celebration, and see it in the wild gestures and reactions of those who joined you.
I saw it as my wife and I visited Wrigley Field to take pictures at the marquee and statues - strangers offered to take pictures for strangers; people stopped moving to stay out of the shot; chalk messages of love and memories covered the walls; humans loved one another.
None of us have died and gone to heaven. But on the day when we honored those who have gone before us, we began an indefinite celebration inspired by a team whose success came not from grieving loss or being overshadowed in its weight but by living in the moment in a way that would make those people proud. Some of my students asked, "How long will this celebration last?" I told them that the win, the parade, and the rally where only the start of something that won't stop.Would a world series win be like "not dying and going to heaven?" #FlyTheW https://t.co/6D6WdmXp55— Dan Masterton (@jesusandchicago) October 28, 2016
As we get a taste of the love that follows when faith is realized and hope is fulfilled, I will use those palpitating moments, those euphoric celebrations, and the impeccable video and audio of that final out as my reset button. That reset button will remind me that faith and hope are never in vein because they long for something which surely awaits.
We haven't yet died. We haven't yet gone to heaven. But man, did we gain a profound taste of the love that we glimpse in potent moments now and the love that surely awaits.
No comments:
Post a Comment