The Cubs and the Cult of True Failure

I've been talking to all sorts of people about the Cubs' playoff run. For a lot of folks, I'm their one stop shop for Cubs fandom. I'm a bit uncomfortable with people looking past the Marlins. They're a talented young team, and the hottest in baseball right now. But that's neither here nor there.

I was talking to my boy Cody the other day when he said the following thing to me:

"The Cubs are going to win the world series. First of all it dawned on me that home or away, the Cubs have atleast as many fans as the team they play. Last night there was as much blue in the stands as there was red. Beating the Cubs in a seven game series means beating Woods and Prior at the 1 & 2 and the 6 & 7. That's hard to do."

He's wrong about the second part. Beating the Cubs means beating Prior and Woods in games 2&4 and 6&7. Yeah, I know that's jumping around in the rotation, but don't tell me that they wouldn't bump Wood up so he can seal the deal.

He is right about the first part though, Cubs fans are everywhere and they're passionate about their team. They're passionate in a way that only football and soccer fans traditionally are; their fire just seems out of place in baseball for some reason. So why all this emotion over baseball?

I don't really know. I think it has something to do with losing. I think all those years of close calls and futility have helped create a mythos around the Cubs. This, in turn, has created a rabidness in their fans that's become their greatest asset. What am I saying?

The Cubs' history of losing has created their greatest strength in assembling a dynasty: their fans.

Don't tell me that the 10K+ Cubs fans raising hell in Atlanta didn't help. The players understand it, why the hell do you think they all kept running back onto the field to high five and spray down the fans? They did it when they won the division, and again in Atlanta.

Since their last World Series title, the Cubs have had 48 managers, thousands of players, a handful of announcers, and two stadiums. The one constant in all this time is the unconditionally conditional love of their fans. So long as there is baseball, there will always be Cubs fans. We, more than anything else define this team.

Tinkers, Evers, Chance, Brock, Williams, Banks, Santo, Jenkins, Matthews, Sutcliff, Smith, Sandberg, Dawson, Dunston, Grace, Sosa, Alou, Prior, Wood have all been the face of this team at various points in history, but the fans are constant, the fans are forever. Before their was a Wrigley Field, before Jack and Harry, there were the fans.

The thing about this team, this incarnation of the Cubs spirit, is that they understand the power that they can draw from the passion of their fans. They understand that giving in to this passion can propel them towards the stars, towards immortality, towards the thing that every baseball player dreams of, a ring.