Ugh…..

If you are reading this blog, more than likely, you are a sports fan.  By now, I’m sure you know about the Chicago Cubs’ latest collapse, so I won’t bore you with the details (and frankly, I don’t want to re-live them).  Let’s just say, I’m glad I fell asleep last night, so I didn’t have to witness the final nail in the Cubs’ coffin or a Dodger celebration.

Talk about a punch in the stomach.  I was very upset after 2003, but this is a different feeling altogether.  To see a team that proved itself the best team in the National League, a team that could have had 100 wins if not for a prolonged slump in August (even with Alfonso Soriano missing 43 games due to injury), a team that outscored its opponents by 100+ runs, completely choke the way they did (outscored 20-6?) is almost worse than the debacle that was 2003.  This was an utterly gut wrenching experience that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

The 2008 Chicago Cubs was a “team of destiny”.  They were at or near the top of all of baseball in pitching, runs scored, on-base percentage, etc.  When they came back to beat the Rockies after being 7 runs down in the 7th inning, with their starters already pulled no less, I honestly thought that this team could do anything.  It was, by far, the best and most talented team of my generation.  Up until this season, it was the 1984 team.  They had the same sort of fiasco back then, but at 10 years old, I didn’t really have the emotional investment I have had since I’ve become an adult.

Right now, I don’t even care about why it happened.  I don’t care about Lou’s decision to go with Dempster in Game 1 or to wait until Game 3 to throw Fukudome under the bus and back over him two or three times (for the record, I don’t agree with them, but I see the logic behind both decisions….but that’s another blog altogether).  I don’t care that the team suddenly remembered they were the Cubs and decided they needed to start swinging at pitches 10 feet out of the strikezone.  I don’t even care that a Gold Glove infielder should have made a play that most little leaguers make.  (That Derrek Lee error in Game 2 may end up being just as memorable to me as the ball getting through Leon Durham’s legs in ‘84.)  The fact is it did happen, and it sucks!

The thing is, I didn’t even really want this team to win for me.  I mean, I did, but more than anything, I wanted them to win it for my father….for my grandfather….and for any of the other long suffering Cub fans that make my 30+ years of fandom look like a small notch on the time line of Cubs’ history.  Now, from a purely selfish standpoint, I wanted them to win it all just to shut up the fans of any other team who always give myself and other Cub fans grief just because “they’re the Cubs”.

My Vineline Magazine came in the mail yesterday.  It had Carlos Zambrano’s no-hitter on the cover.  I probably won’t even read that now.  I’m too damn depressed.  Maybe, after a couple weeks, I’ll be able to take a look at it.  For right now, though…….

The only saving grace in all of this is that the Angels, the AL favorite to make it to the World Series, is on the brink of getting swept out of the first round as well.  It just goes to show that if you clinch too early, you can really lose your focus.