We’re All Cub Fans Now

I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan. They’ve been my team ever since the Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Terry Pendleton, Vince Coleman teams of the 80s. I was late to a Friday night Halloween party in 2006 because I was jumping around my living room watching Adam Wainwright strike out Brandon Inge. I was at Game 7 of the 2011 World Series when they beat the Texas Rangers, transforming Busch Stadium into a deafening dance party of confetti, beer, and fireworks. Football has become boring garbage, hockey -like NASCAR- is really more of a subcultural lifestyle than a sport, and the NBA is only worth watching in June. So for me, baseball is king. And the Cardinals sit on the throne as the only team I care about in the only sport I care about.

In my lifetime, the Cardinals have won 7 pennants and 3 World Series. It’s good to be a bird on the bat.

And of course, part of being a Cardinals fan is knowing that you’re better than the Chicago Cubs. Not primarily in a condescending, elitist way (though occasionally that creeps in), but more in the way a big brother treats his little brother. We love ya, but you’re just not gonna be better than us. Team to team, year to year, sure…the Cubs might finish ahead of the Cardinals. But long term, big picture, the Cubs’ franchise will always ride in the backseat because the Cardinals’ franchise is the big brother who always rides shotgun. It’s a rivalry. One of the best and longest in sports. And our role in the rivalry is the bigger older brother who, even in down years, still knows he’s bigger, older, and better. The Cubs role in the rivalry is the upstart younger brother who desperately wants respect but never quite feels like he’s gotten it. I don’t expect this dynamic to ever change, frankly. It’s the same way the Packers always have and still view the Bears. It’s the same way the Yankees always have and still view the Red Sox.

I recently read a a piece in the Chicago Tribune written by Will Leitch (a Cardinal fan). He writes, “I’m going to cheer against the Chicago Cubs. I am rooting against you, Cubs, because this is what Cardinal fans do. This is what a rivalry is. I’ve spent every waking moment of my life rooting against you. Ohio State shouldn’t root for Michigan because…that’s Michigan! This is the state of the world. And this is, I would argue, respect. So know that when I, and Cardinals fans everywhere, cheer against the Cubs, it is a salute: we take you seriously enough not to patronize you by wishing you good luck. We want you to lose. That means so much more than not caring what you do at all. That means we care.”

Leitch wrote that piece on October 4^th, and I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking he was right, that my duty as a Cardinal fan was to root against the Cubs as a sign of respect because that’s what rivals do.

But all postseason, I found myself not rooting against the Cubs. I found myself smiling when they somehow scored 4 runs in the 9^th to beat the Giants in the Division Series. I found myself cheering when Miggy Montero hit a Grand Slam in the 8^th inning to effectively clinch Game 1 of the NLCS. I found myself marveling at Javy Baez night after night. And when that dramatic double play ended the NLCS and sent the Cubs to the World Series, I realized that Leitch was wrong. As a Cardinal fan, my instinct was supposed to be to root against it. Or be dismissive. Or sarcastic. Or even scowl in disapproval. But when the Cubs won their first pennant in 71 years, something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I was happy. Genuinely happy. I was riveted to the screen. I stayed up for another 90 minutes watching the postgame celebrations with a smile on my face.

Why?

Because I’m “not really a Cardinal fan”? Of course not. That’s nonsense. Because I’m a big brother cutely patronizing the Cubs with a condescending “Well, it’s about time, so good for them and their fans. Bless their hearts.” Is that it? No. It’s not that either. It’s not because I’m a weak Cardinal fan or because I have a soft spot for long-suffering Cub fans. And it’s certainly not because I don’t care.

The reason I was smiling, the reason I’m genuinely happy, and the reason Leitch is wrong, is because it all felt…important. Significant. A Cubs World Series is far, far bigger than a two-team rivalry. This is about Baseball with a capital B. This is about Sports, with a capital S. This is about History, with a capital H. This is the stuff of myth and legend on the grandest possible scale.

A Cubs World Series is the finale of M*A*S*H. A Cubs World Series is the US Hockey team beating the Russians at Lake Placid. A Cubs World Series is Frodo tossing the ring into Mount Doom. A Cubs World Series is a soldier coming home from war and meeting his daughter on the tarmac. A Cubs World Series is landing on the Moon. It’s in that epic, folkloric category. It’s half underdog story, half iconic cultural experience. Who in their right mind roots against that?

Overstating it? I actually don’t think so.

The story of the Chicago Cubs and their antagonistic, incompatible relationship with the World Series is a part of the American fabric in a way that’s hard to explain, but easy to feel if you just stop and think about it. Baseball pre-dates the Civil War (1846), and the Cubs are one of its oldest teams (1876). Baseball is huge in Asian communities. Baseball is huge in Hispanic communities. Baseball is huge in Caucasian communities. Americans of every race, nationality, and language are familiar with baseball as the national past-time, and therefore, familiarity with the plight of the Chicago Cubs cuts across cultural barriers like little else could. The Cubs are a shared national punchline. Television shows, comedians, and politicians have joked about it for decades. Back to the Future II (released in 1989) mockingly predicted it wouldn’t happen until 2015. Despite not really caring who’s a fan of what team, most of the nation still somehow knows which celebrities are Cub fans (Bill Murray, Eddie Vedder, John Cusack, etc.) Just mention the year 1908 in the context of baseball, and a good portion of Americans will know what you’re talking about. In a time of so much media fragmentation, close-minded tribalism, and retreating to comfort zones, the long-running, generational narrative of a Cubs World Series is one of the few things that almost all of us are familiar with and care about, whether we’re baseball fans or not.

And at this point, it may be one of the few, positive cross-cultural, “you’ll remember where you were” moments we have left. Until we land on Mars.

Whether they’d articulate it the way I just did, I’m convinced most everyone else across the country can sense and understand this. And if they haven’t yet, they will by the time Games 3 and 4 of this World Series come around. I think it’s only Cardinal fans like me who are at risk of missing the transcendental bigness of this story because we’re faced with the dilemma of a silly rivalry. We listen to perspectives like Leitch’s and think our role is to root against the Cubs because that’s what Cardinal fans do. Out of respect, apparently. We listen to his analogy of Ohio State and Michigan and think it makes sense, when it’s not even in the same ballpark of the same city of the same continent. This is not Duke vs. North Carolina. This is not Celtics vs. Lakers. This isn’t even Democrats vs. Republicans.

This is the prospect of the freaking Chicago Cubs winning the freaking World Series, and if you can’t understand why that’s on a completely separate Mount Rushmore of the American cultural pantheon that unanimously overrides your obedience to the habitual narrative, then you’re missing the forest for the trees and putting rivalry with a small ‘r’ ahead of Baseball with a capital B. And if we’re not careful, we Cardinal fans are gonna be salty sourpusses as one of the (if not THE) most important, emotional, riveting dramas of our lifetime unfolds before our eyes.

And for what? For allegiance to how we’re “supposed to act” because of a rivalry? Is that worth voluntarily removing ourselves from the national excitement of a phenomenon that has been an undercurrent of the American experience for a century?

My instinctual happy reaction to the 2016 Cubs postseason was confusing until I realized what was happening: I’m a Baseball fan first, then a Cardinal fan. Without Baseball first, there would be no Cardinals. In fact, I’d (smugly) argue one of the centerpieces of being a Cardinal fan, and one of the reasons we (smugly) consider ourselves the best fans in baseball, is because first and foremost we are Baseball fans. We care about the Game. And a Cubs World Series is as “Baseball” as it gets. So before my brain caught up, that deep down part of me that loves Baseball…that gut-level part of me that loves stories, fairy tales, amazing accomplishments, underdogs and happy endings already understood that blind compliance to a rivalry is not worth missing this. Because this is bigger than that. My love for Sports, History, Culture, America, and Boyish Wonder trump any trivial, contrived attitude generated by tired old tropes of red vs. blue.

As a Cardinal fan, I’m first and foremost a Baseball fan. And this is the greatest Baseball story of my lifetime. I can’t pretend to root against it. I don’t want to. 

Now….if the Cubs win the World Series this year, you’d better believe that I’ll be back to my old ways next year. Leitch might be right next year. Next year, we go back to rooting against the rivals out of respect for our opponent.

But not this year.

So Cub fans, this is coming from your arch nemesis: a lifetime Cardinal fan who relishes pounding you into the dirt, belittling you, mocking your perpetual, self-inflicted failure caused by decades of horrible ownership, contracts and decision-making, scorning your disinterested fans (who only go to the game to “be seen” or sit in the bleachers to drink terrible beer with their shirts off), laughing at your stubborn unwillingness to move beyond silly traditions (the ancient ballpark, the dumb ivy, the unnecessarily old-school scoreboard, and that stupid “Go Cubs Go” song which is inaccurate in so many ways -the games aren’t even on WGN anymore, and you inexplicably play the song at the end of the game despite the lyrics saying, “the Cubs are gonna win today”…maddening). A lifetime Cardinal fan who loves rolling his eyes at the embarrassing way you invite ‘celebrities’ to sing the 7^th Inning stretch, who enjoys ridiculing your dumb amount of day games because your old, busted, cracker jack stadium is in a residential neighborhood, taunting your irrational embrace of nonexistent curses (goats, Bartman, etc), and shaking my head at the way you willfully infantize your team by embracing the “lovable loser” moniker and cutely calling them the “Cubbies,” (you don’t see us childishly disrespecting our team by calling them the “Birdies”). But you don’t care about any of that. Because you’re a Cub fan. And you’re a Cub fan because you were born into it, which means you mostly just “say” you’re a Cub fan so you can post, “Go Cubbies!” (…maddening) and occasionally partake in the fun social aspect of curses, rooftop seats, and childish goofy nostalgia. It’s certainly not because you care about baseball.

I (intentionally and hopefully) ruffle your feathers with that condescending checklist of contempt to articulate why rooting against the Cubs is soooo easy for us Cardinal fans. But I also go through it to highlight all the stuff that I’m happily overlooking right now because it doesn’t matter. None of it. Not this year.

This year is the year the Chicago Cubs have finally won the pennant and might finally win the World Series. And that’s bigger than everything else. By far.

So I’m openly rooting for the Cubs because I’m a Baseball fan first, as all good Cardinals fans are. I might even go out in public wearing a Cubs shirt during this World Series. And when people say, “Hey, aren’t you a Cardinal fan? How can you root for the Cubs?”, I’ll say, “It’s bigger than that dude. This is the Chicago Cubs and the World Series. This is as Baseball as it gets.”

During the Olympics, we’re all Americans. And during this World Series, we’re all Cub fans. And for the same reasons.

Well, except for Cleveland. Because, you know…Cleveland.