The 2014 major league baseball season is underway, and as a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan, it means another season of frustration and disappointment. And baseball mortality. Let me explain.
I have been a Cubs fan since my parents took me to my first game when I was 5 years old. We sat in the bleachers, where I cheered my favorite Cub, outfielder Andy Pafko. That was 65 years ago. In the interim, the Cubs have not played in a single World Series, much less win one. The mantra for Cubs fans has always been, "Wait till next year." I have recited that mantra my entire adult life, assuming that the next season or the season after that, the Cubbies would put it all together. My confidence grew when the cash strapped Wrigley family sold the team to the cash rich Tribune Company. Better days were coming. Yeah...right. It was a couple of more decades of futility. Then the Trib sells the team to an investor named Sam Zell, who didn't seem to have a clue or the slightest interest in running a baseball team. Then Zell sells the Cubs to the Ricketts family, wealthy, successful and knowledgeable Chicagoans. Finally, local folks with deep pockets who truly cared about the Cubs. I was ready to start ordering my World Series tickets. Yeah...right.
Turns out the Ricketts took on so much debt buying the team, their finances developed ricketts. One of the most prominent, successful and profitable franchises in baseball became so cash strapped, instead of being run like a major market team, the Cubs were being run like a team from Tampa Bay or Kansas City. Since the Ricketts took over, we've had 4 straight losing seasons and attendance in freefall.
So here I am in 2014. I'm now 70, with another losing season looming ahead. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never see the Cubs in a World Series in my lifetime. And with that realization, my enthusiasm for the team has shriveled faster than Obama's approval ratings. I don't want to be that guy, who, on his deathbed, with the Grim Reaper hovering over him, says, "Wait till next year."
Yeah...right.
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