A Eulogy For the Cubs Season

Well, I have by meaning to do this since the season ended but found that it is only now that I can even stomach it without either feeling nauseous or depressed (or both). I guess the good news is that the Cubs did fulfill my pre-season prediction of back-to-back division championships and actually exceeded my win prediction (I predicted 91 and they ended up with 97). And of course I will always remember seeing the no-hitter up in Miller Park.

But that’s where the good news ends, as I had the extreme displeasure of watching my beloved team act like a bunch of clowns for 27 innings and get bounced. No gut-wrenching losses, no false hope, just 3 games of bad baseball from a team that looked cooked from the moment James Loney hit the grand slam in the 5th inning of game 1.

Minutes after the Cubs were officially eliminated, I came to the realization that this season officially marks my transformation from young, optimistic Cubs fan to old, jaded one. My entire life as a Cubs fan has been spent waiting for the one season where they’d be so good that they’d just steamroll everyone. Even when they have made the playoffs in the past, they were always the underdog and even though you hoped against hope that they’d pull it out, you certainly weren’t shocked when they didn’t. For the better part of 6 months this year, they finally were that team that seemed unstoppable. And guess what? It didn’t matter. I’ve been forced to realize that the worst part about this is that now I don’t even know how I go about getting excited about them next year (or any other season). Even if they started out 40-0, I’ll be left going “So what? That still doesn’t mean they’ll perform when it counts in the playoffs.” Now, of course the logical part of my brain tells me that 8 good teams made it through the 6-month grind, and already half of them have gone home. Even the Angels, with the best record in baseball, lasted only a game longer than the Cubs. And, of course, ultimately there will only be 1 out of 32 teams whose fans will be happy with the end of the season. Yes, my rational mind gets all of that. But then again, if I was truly rational, I wouldn’t be a Cubs fan to begin with.

That’s as far as I can explain it in words. So I’d like to further express how I feel in pictures:



This first one's my favorite. It's pretty much the exact expression on my face while watching the Cubs commit 3 errors in the 2nd inning of game 2 en route to falling behind 5-0.