I’ve lived a sad, pitiful existence, one of sleepless nights, tearful goodbyes, and heartbreaking admissions. I’ve lived the life of a drifter, a forgotten son strolling down native streets toward the Darkness on the edge of town, while the most devout minds of my time, sitting hysterical, naked, looking for an enraged fix, were obliterated by the craving for victory.

I’ve lived the life of a Chicago Cubs fan.

To say I was a devout fan would be an understatement. I lived and breathed the Chicago Cubs, dining on statistics, internalizing stories and hearsay, and positively swimming in the various neuroses and mythologies that compose modern “Cubdom,” the collective culture and conscience of the Cubs.

To the outsider—the uninitiated, as I like to call them—following the exploits of the Chicago Cubs has the tendency to appear insane. Why, one could legitimately ask, would so many people devote to a cause with such perilous extremes? Why, one could logically pose, would the same cliques of hopeful followers surround a situation utterly devoid of success? Why, one could perfectly suggest, do you waste your time? These are all fair questions deserving of honest, straightforward answers—answers that I, actually, cannot provide.

Being a Cubs fan is, in some odd, tribal sort of way, beyond the standard comprehension of human behavior. It is fully known that the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908 and have not even appeared in the World Series since 1945. In the ensuing years, disappointment after repeated disappointment has shocked, appalled, and saddened fans of all generations.

Being a Cubs fan is painful. Being a Cubs fan is infuriating. Being a Cubs fan, therefore, is life, and even with my current disposition, one of an out-of-state college student with little time and waning interest in the inner-workings of the Chicago Cubs, a mystical, ecstatic truth regarding the Cubs must be stated: the Cubs fan experiences the very best baseball has to offer.

Baseball—in all its philosophies, mythologies, legacies, and agonies—finds its ultimate shrine with the Chicago Cubs.

Strike 1

Locating a starting point in my assimilation into Cubdom is a difficult if not impossible task, largely because there was no choice in the matter. Never would I insinuate that I was forced to accept the Cubs as the only feasible baseball franchise in Chicago and forced to discard that OTHER team of off-black undergarments for the feet on the Southside of Chicago. Rather, rooting for the Cubs was the leading component to my genetic code.

My father, as a child, not only idolized legendary Cubs players Ernie Banks and Ron Santo, but he actively imitated Leo Durocher (the infamously hot-headed manager of the Cubs in the late 1960s) by scheduling games with the fellow boys on the block, assigning positions for each game, and coordinating real-time strategies. This managerial instinct, coupled with my mother’s homegrown alliance to the Cubs, assured, with a fair amount of accuracy and precision, my commitment to baseball and the beloved Cubbies.

As far back as I can remember, then, in the month of May—when the cruel Chicago winters finally relented—a bonanza of baseball action descended on my quiet hometown street of Windgate Court, all centered around one key instrument: the Wiffle Ball.

A white, plastic baseball with oval-shaped slits circling the top half of the sphere, the Wiffle Ball was a gift from the baseball gods, a tool of unusual sympathy that could create the utmost confidence in even the least talented of players. With the Wiffle Ball, a player could alternate between blazing fastballs, subtle changeups, disappearing sinkers, and the arching, colossal curveballs that was the stuff of legend for left-handed pitchers like myself. For a player who always felt disillusioned by the harshness of the league-style hardball yet desperately desired to emulate the pitches and throwing style of the Cubs’ star pitcher Kerry Wood, the Wiffle Ball allowed me to have my cake and eat it too. And it was cheesecake. With sprinkles.

Like all amateur Wiffle Ball enthusiasts, I dreamed of a career in professional baseball for about two-and-a-half years. Though my forays into Little League proved psychologically disastrous for more reasons than one (more on that at a later date), the magical season of 1998, the year of the Sammy Sosa/Mark McGwire home run race to break Roger Maris’ epochal record of 61 home runs in a single season, installed a sense of confidence that was damn near impossible to shake, especially considering that Sosa played for the Cubs.

An immigrant from the slums of the Dominican Republic, where Sosa would practice using a baseball mitt made from a milk carton, the “rags to riches” plotline and infectious smile of Sosa charmed the Windy City—despite the fact that nobody could understand what the hell he was saying. An angular and dissonant mixture between English, Spanish, and an unholy hybrid of the two (call it nishlish), every time Sosa opened his mouth for pre-game interviews it was like an avant-garde performance by experimental composer John Cage. But the man could hit home runs. Ultimately finishing with 66 home runs behind McGwire’s 70, the home run race reinvigorating a sport still reeling from a bitter players’ union strike in 1994.

Though the true methods behind this explosion of offensive production, i.e. steroids, lends a disturbing bitterness to the season of 1998, my memories of the season, along with the accompanying emotions, remain pure and heartbreaking in their innocence: cutting out clippings in the newspaper documenting where Sosa and McGwire’s progress stood in comparison to Maris’ and posting them on the refrigerator; reading sports columns my mom recommended for insight; watching every minute of every game, waiting for the next home run; and, of course, running outside with my brother and best friend down the block after the game’s conclusion and imitating Sosa’s stance, Sosa’s swing, and Sosa’s famous “home run hop” after every towering shot over the beautiful green ivy of Wrigley Field.

Dreams of sugarplum MLBs continued to dance in my head for the next couple of years until I realized one key, devastating fact: I was using a Wiffle Ball, and they used…real baseballs at the…pro level. And again, Little League lacked both the fun and gusto of my Wiffle Ball sessions with my brother.

While I continued to play and enjoy Wiffle Ball baseball (most notably during the annual “Fathers/Sons” baseball games between all the old guys and young bucks at family parties), I was a tad crushed by this realization; still, my love for baseball only grew due in large part to two “p” aspects of maturity: professionalism and philosophy.

Though I never committed to a single professional goal in high school, I came to the realization fairly easily that I enjoyed nothing more than consuming baseball statistics and discussing the sport with friends and family. It was riveting to memorize the batting averages of the top performing hitters in the league, the ERA of the top pitchers, the various sound bites and managerial blunders of all your adversarial teams, and, naturally, nitpick every false step and idiotic mishap by the Chicago White Sox.

Then, I would ferociously debate these seemingly objective stats in any way I chose to interpret them. Students, dear friends, aunts and uncles, even teachers were fodder for sports debate. One particular student, a scrawny, misguided White Sox fan, brought some actual excitement to my sophomore honors English course, frequently challenging what I so clearly considered the superiority of the Cubs.

While students always provided an ample challenge, the latter dialogues, those with teachers, were the true Socratic dialogues of public discourse, battles of wits that actually had the tendency to irritate fellow students. After all, my membership to the Chicago Cubs fan base (it’s unsigned and lacks documentation, but we know) always allowed me greater preference with the teachers. One particular teacher, a wonderful instructor of world history, would frequently call me to his desk in a stern, serious demeanor with hints of academia in his voice, only to ask for my views on the idiotic choice of pulling Prior in the seventh from last night’s game.

The notion of some kind of profession revolving solely around baseball—that being sports journalism, of course—seemed like a dream come true.

Beyond the raw statistical and analytical feed, however, I felt a keen connection to the aesthetics of the sport, something that was gloriously embellished by Chicago’s Wrigley Field. The green grass, so pure and silky smooth you’d swear it was stitched on the ground by master seamstresses from Savile Row; the pale blue skies, so sharp and contrasting they sting your eyes; the concession stands, selling revolting hot dogs, salty peanuts, triple-bypass inducing funnel cakes, and Old Style beer; the trademark ivy on the walls, flocking across the stadium and shining bright white lights of tradition like Apollo; and finally, the apartments and rustic houses of Wrigleyville, standing idly behind the bleachers and stadium gates.

Beyond the aesthetics though, the anticipation of the game was riveting. Early on in my life I began to actively expect the reactions of my classmates when I publicly stated that baseball was my favorite sport. “Oh…” the more polite ones would say, clearly sympathetic that I would love a sport of such patent boredom. “Eww! Watch basketball” others would kindly suggest, and if basketball were not the sport they offered as a substitute, they would cite football, soccer, and even golf as recreational activities with more excitement and zeal than baseball. The beauty of baseball, though—the demand for attention and respect for patience—is the same trait that bored these students, and the sheer elegance of the game’s craft, the notion that every. single. pitch, of every. single. inning, could, in some way, affect the outcome of every. single. game, was not only exuberant but life-affirming, even if, in the case of the Chicago Cubs, those moments of victorious anticipation rarely came.

Strike 2

The glorious 1998 season, the season of the home run, presented an anomaly to Chicago Cubs fans in more ways than the shattering of Roger Maris’ home run record—the Cubs actually made the playoffs. As a maturing pupil of Cubdom, I would attend frequent, informal educational sessions provided by my father (normally as he waxed his car, or washed the windows of his car, or cleaned the tired of his car, or brushed the rims of his car with a toothbrush, or…). Generally focusing on the various anecdotes and great players of Cubs’ past, my father always repeated one essential fact during these history lessons: The Cubs sucked. As in, the Cubs really sucked, and any hope of the contrary was not only fretful, but also entirely delusional, considering that counting the ’98 season, the Cubs had only reached the playoffs three times since their last World Series appearance in ’45, losing in the first round all three times. Bets on Kirstie Alley losing weight would pack more optimism than a successful season for the Chicago Cubs.

The 2003 season, though, was supposed to be different. This was the year, as former Cubs player/turned broadcaster Ron Santo always says, “that we’re going all the WAY!!!” The Cubs had hired Dusty Baker as manager, a popular chess master of the game who had guided the San Francisco Giants to the World Series the year before.

They retained what many analysts touted as one of the strongest starting rotations in baseball history, with Kerry Wood, Matt Clement (who boasted a prodigious goatee that was so formidable, so idolized by Cubs fans, that venders actually began selling fake “Clement goatees” you could attach to your chin), and rising star Carlos Zambrano. And, the team’s roster contained a perfect mix of young talent with learned veterans, from Kenny Lofton of the American League Champion Cleveland Indians from the ‘90s, to newcomer Corey Patterson, from Moisés Alou, a true MLB journeyman of chameleonic skill, to Aramis Ramirez, a power hitter who filled the long-vacant deficiency at third base.

The true star of the 2003 Cubs, though, and the main reason why the season emitted such optimism, was undoubtedly Mark Prior, a starting pitcher of such meteoric talent I thought it impossible that the Cubs had drafted him. A star college player at USC, Prior had the cool composure and lethal precision of a cyborg, using the skills of not just natural talent and drive but hours upon hours of training. Prior indulged in excruciating practices with his pitching instructors that even included videotaping of the practices and studying of the tapes during afterhours where further analysis of Prior’s delivery could be utilized and perfected upon. His liquid-smooth delivery of a 95 mile-an-hour fastball and disappearing curve aroused comparisons to Tom Seaver, but Prior was more than an emulation of a legend. He was the hope of a World Series, the kind of leader Cubs fans had been waiting for—with such excruciating patience—for decades.

The 2003 season swung and swayed with the wild unpredictability of a defunct roller coaster, as the Cubs’ magical starting rotation propelled the team to the top of the National League Central Division. Capped off by a dramatic five-game series with the rival St. Louis Cardinals and a third-place vote for Prior in the NL Cy Young ballot, the optimism that surged through the streets of Chicago was not only contagious, but overwhelming, like the sensation of Ron Santo’s classic clicking of the heels after every Cubs victory when he was player.

The first playoff series with the Atlanta Braves only continued this drive, as the Cubs won the five-game series in dramatic fashion by closing out the Braves in game five behind a masterful outing by Kerry Wood. Even better, game three, which the Cubs won 3 to 1, featured a literary masterpiece by Mark Prior on the mound of a complete nine innings and only two hits. The uncomfortable stigma of confidence began eroding off the arching skyscrapers in the Windy City…maybe this really was our year?

The next series—the National League Championship Series versus the Florida Marlins, the final set of games before entrance to the World Series—began badly. The first game, an 11-inning nail biter, contained no less than seven home runs (and, as is the tradition in Wrigley, every home run from the opposing team was promptly thrown back onto the field). Even with the gravity-defying fireworks at the plate, the game ended with a pitiful whimper of the Cubs blowing an early four-run lead, tying the game to force it into extra innings, and then relinquishing the game with, yep, a solo home run. The second game, though, was different. Prior was pitching. And once again, Prior was brilliant. Not allowing any runs through his first five innings, Prior led the Cubs to a breezy 12 to 3 victory, a momentum changer that motivated the Cubs in their next two victories, both while the visiting the Marlins’ Pro Player Stadium.

I can still remember, in fact, listening to game three as my family and I drove home from a particularly rainy family party, one that supposedly served as a cousin’s birthday party but in actuality was nothing more than a joint TV-watching session of the United Cubs Congress. That game, another 11-inning drama fest, concluded with a game-winning home run by the Cubs’ Randall Simon, a player shaped like a glorified Hostess cupcake who swung, literally, at every conceivable pitch thrown at him.

Though they dropped game five, the Cubs were in the perfect position to close out the series and enter the World Series: game six was home at Wrigley, and Mark Prior was pitching. Pessimism had always defined my existence as a Cubs fan. I became used to the idea that my team was a bunch of lovable losers. Victory, it seemed, was a joke. But now, with Prior on the mound before the backdrop of ivy, wind, and Old Style, I had confidence.

Strike 3

Prior, as Cubs fans routinely expected him to be, was masterful, the perfect mixture between power pitching and clever control. Holding a three-run lead into the seventh inning, Prior effortlessly retired the Marlins’ side, making way for the famed seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley with the ceremonial rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” this time sung by actor and comedian Bernie Mac. At Wrigley, it is customary to substitute the phrase “home team” with “Cubbies,” except Mac—a Southsider who supported the White Sox—added his own twist, instead substituting the phrase with “champs.” Watching the game, I couldn’t help but feel pride. We were six outs away from the World Series. Everyone was singing in the stands, broad smiles across their faces, hands in the air with fits of jubilation. Little did I know what an omen it would turn out to be.

Everyone, though, felt so happy, especially when Prior batted for himself at the bottom of the seventh, a clear sign that he would continue pitching into the eighth inning. Dusty Baker, the Cubs manager, had shown an uncanny confidence in his pitchers throughout the regular season, routinely leaving them in beyond their typical threshold and pitch-count average. In one game, Kerry Wood threw a spectacular 140 pitches. News writers and TV talking heads questioned Baker’s pitching decisions constantly, guaranteeing that such measures would destroy the arms of his pitchers.

I always considered these arguments, and during the dog-day stretches of the regular season, I tended to believe them. Now, though, such positions were, if not irrelevant, then idiotic. The Cubs were six outs from the World Series, and their flagship player, one of the main ingredients in Baker’s experimental pitch’s brew, was leading his team via shutout. And he had only given up three hits.

Prior easily retired the first batter of the inning, and a colossal wave of shock, awe, and fear reverberated through the greater Chicago area, slapping each and every Cubs fan in the face with power of a fastball: Prior was pitching, and the Cubs were now five outs away from the World Series. The next batter, Juan Pierre, doubled, but nobody fretted. After all, Prior was pitching, and the Cubs were only five outs away from the World Series. The next batter, Luis Castillo, had had a career year, batting .314 and winning a Gold Glove. In an exhaustive, highly irritating batting series, Castillo embarked on an adversarial tête-à-tête with Prior, taking pitches, fouling others, and waiting for the perfect pitch like a Buddhist monk.

Then—on the eighth pitch of the at-bat—an event occurred that rocked Cubdom to its very foundations, the kind of cataclysmic event that finally shook Cubdom from the euphoria that Prior was pitching at the Cubs were only five outs away from the World Series. Castillo hit a pop fly down the left field line into foul territory. Moisés Alou was playing in left field at the time, and he had earned the reputation of a steady, reliable fielder with many a daring catch and dramatic throw-outs at home plate.

Alou approached the fly in a feathery manner, gracefully running over the foul line and pursuing the ball, as it drifted closer to the stands. Alou jumped, his mitt open, eyes wide, and for a brief moment—a singular moment of unity humans experience maybe five times in their lives—Cubdom held its breath. Please, Moisés. Catch the ball. Prior is pitching, and we are only five outs away from the World Series.

But Moisés did not catch the ball. No, he was not able to catch the ball because a fan interfered, an average man from a modest, middle class background whose name now sends shivers down the collective spines of Cubdom: Steve Bartman. Wearing a dorky black turtleneck, blue Cubs hat, and thick black headphones over the hat, Bartman also wore glasses across a pudgy, ghost-white face. He even looked the part, the kind of guy you could have randomly chosen from a crowed of two million on who would fuck up a baseball game of unparalleled importance.

And, despite revisionist history by the more sympathetic Cubs fans, Bartman did fuck up that play. He reached out of the stands—while he listened to Pat Hughes and Ron Santo with his headphones, while he was conscious of what he was sabotaging—and interfered with the play. Alou was furious. Fans were shocked. The event reeked of foreshadowing.

Prior’s next pitch was a wild pitch, the ball four that sent Castillo to first and advanced Pierre to third. Suddenly, after a freak occurrence of fan interference, Prior seemed shaky. He was losing his cool, losing his control, losing his grip on the game. It seemed now, so suddenly, so clearly, that all those months of overextension was finally catching up to him. Prior was tiring out. The critics of Baker’s strategy seemed to be right all along. Prior jumped ahead 0-2 on the next batter, Iván Rodriguez, who then sharply singled to left and drove home Pierre.

The next batter, Miguel Cabrera, hitting a bouncing ball to Cubs’ shortstop Alex Gonzalez, the kind of play that Gonzalez—the NL’s leading shortstop in fielding percentage—had fielded perfectly hundreds of times throughout the season, the ideal ground ball that could result in the inning-ending double play that would crush the Marlins’ rally, reinstate the Cubs’ confidence, and bring the team to three outs from the World Series. Gonzalez promptly muffed the grounder. Closing his mitt too early, Gonzalez dropped the ball and Cabrera made it safely to first.

At this point, with Bartman, the wild pitch, and now Gonzalez’s error, the situation began to utter one word—curse. I sat on my couch, my knees clenched together so hard they hurt, my eyes gazing at the television screen so intently they watered, my knuckles white with agony, and it hit me plain as a cold splash of water. The Cubs are cursed.

And I knew, without any doubt, that the same thought was occurring to millions of Cubs fans around the world, because the main reason the Cubs had not appeared in the World Series since 1945, thought many, was a curse, the “Curse of the Billy Goat” that had been placed on the team during that World Series. For the un-initiated: the supposed “Curse of the Billy Goat” began in 1945 when the owner of the famous Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago (the inspiration for the legendary “Cheeseburger” skits on Saturday Night Live), Billy Sianis, was ejected from his seat in Wrigley Field because of his pet goat’s odor (yes, he brought the goat with him to the game). Infuriated at the disrespect the Cubs had shown to his goat, Sianis placed a curse on the team, proclaiming they would never win another World Series. Despite being up two games to one over the opposing Detroit Tigers, the Cubs went on to lose the series in seven games, would not even appear in the playoffs for almost 40 years, and, as previously explained, have never made it to a World Series since then.

Though other curses existed, most notably the “Curse of the Black Cat” that led to the infamous collapse of the 1969 Cubs who many thought were World Series bound, the Billy Goat was the overriding force that always seemed to rear its ugly, demented, sadistic head every time the Cubs seemed on the brink to success.

And it continued—the next Marlins’ batter, Derrek Lee, doubled, driving in two more Marlins and tying the game. Prior was taken out and replaced by Kyle Farnsworth, but everyone knew the game was lost at that point. The signs were clear. Fan interference of inconceivable lengths. An error by the most unlikely player. The implosion of one of the more dominating pitchers in the league. The Marlins would score five more runs in that inning, going on to win the game eight to three, and at that point, the Cubs’ fate was secured. It didn’t matter that there was one game left in the series, that it was at Wrigley, and that Kerry Wood was pitching—the Cubs were cursed, and such facts were futile.

I am not suggesting in any way that a real curse on the Cubs exists, and that it motivated Steve Bartman to interfere with that fly ball; instead, the curse is psychological, existing on the brink of every Cubs player’s minds through every facet of the game, increasing in stature and power with each failing year and refusing to let up. Therefore, the curse, beyond any reasonable doubt, is real, infecting every swing of the bat, every sprint through the grass, every throw of the arm. It is real, and it is omniscient, and the Cubs, despite their best-intentioned efforts, could do nothing to stop it on game six.

Despite the bitterness I hold towards Steve Bartman, ultimately the blame for the game six collapse falls on Dusty Baker, and not just for his managing of the Cubs’ priceless starting rotation during the regular season, but the fact that he refused to do his job. Baker, during that collapse, was the manager of the Cubs. It was his duty, as the puppeteer of the team with fingers reaching to every facet, to immediately neutralize the situation, to bury any frustrations at fan interference, to have pitchers ready in the bullpen should Prior lose his focus, and to have the leadership to face such adversities in such important situations. He didn’t provide any of these antidotes, and the Cubs failed.

After the failure of Bartman, Alou, Gonzalez, Prior, and Baker, after the hopes and dreams of Cubdom were shattered by a meat patty and goat hoof, I stumbled to bed, my stomach in knots and my soul in shambles. Sleep came easy, but dreams came with a vengeance, and I knew the Cubs didn’t have a chance in hell to win game seven. And they didn’t. They lost six to nine. The Marlins went on to win the World Series.

Out

The events of that game six still, to this day, inspire a wash of melancholy and agony, probably because I still cannot believe they actually happened. 2003 was supposed to be the Cubs’ year. It just could not happen. Even Jay Mariotti, a notoriously grumpy Chicago sports writer (and Ohio University grad in journalism, my current foray) wrote optimistic columns during that Championship Series, easing any doubts fans might have had on the Cubs’ chances.

Nothing came of it, though, but heartache and despair, and while those two nouns may appear on first glance to be nothing more than the typical hyperventilating screed heard from most sports fans, I can assure you, with all the honesty and empathy a confused 20-year-old can muster, that it is painfully accurate. Every time I remember that series or reminisce with old friends, my eyes pinch at the corners, and my stomach sinks into the abyss.

Every time I watch the Cubs and admire their beautiful white uniforms with the classic blue pinstripes, I see that fly ball failing to enter Alou’s glove. And even during the composition of this essay that you currently read—as I re-familiarized myself with names, statistics, and events—I could remember every step to my room after that game six, curling into bed, refusing to brush my teeth, wash my face, change into pajamas, and see anything resembling another human face. So yes, heartache, despair, agony—these all are legitimate, sincere, dire emotions Cubs fans feel when they recount these experiences.

I hate these memories so much…yet, every time I consider the effect baseball has had on my life, from a toddler using a tee-ball set, to an adolescent with dreams of professional sports, to a high school sage of statistics and debate, I realize that the mythology of baseball, the dense web of hearsay, folklore, and legends, is the one, true reason that I continue to admire the sport, even in light of the devastating steroid controversies that cripple the integrity of the game. It befuddles me that I can hate something so much while loving it to such an extreme.

I loathe the fact that a stinkin’ billy goat could, it seemed, effectively curse the Cubs, prohibiting them from reaching the World Series by any means necessary, including freak errors, bullpen implosions, and fan interference. I empathized with fans of the Red Sox, and how, seemingly, the fact that team owners sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to stage the original production of “No, No, Nanette” had produced a similar curse on their fine franchise. I hated these things with a passion, tossing and turning in bed, fighting tears, throwing pillows and jumping in the air at every inconceivable mishap, every error, every earned run, every loss—yet, I loved the mystery behind these events, loved the troubling ambiguity, loved the way they challenged basic rationality and exceeded the typical intellectual boundaries required to be a sports fan.

These are the traits that make baseball the unique sport that it is, the reason fantasy films such as “Field of Dreams” are only possible with baseball, a sport that transcends rational discourse for enlightenment, for spirituality, for purpose. Baseball, in all intents and purposes, was my religion. So in a sick and twisted way, Cubs fans, in all their depression and agony, experience the best that baseball has to offer.

Aside from a World Series, of course.