What would happen if the Cubs actually won the World Series?
The Chicago Cubs are 11 wins away from the team’s first World Series title in 108 years.
And why can't they win those 11 games? The Cubs have the best roster and form heading into Friday’s Game 1 of their National League Division Series matchup with the San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field.
There’s a lot of crazy, curious things that can happen between now and the clinching game of the World Series, and there’s absolutely no guarantee the Cubs will even win a game in the postseason.
The weight of a century-plus of failure hasn’t moved on Chicago’s big shoulders.
But for the first time in a long time, there’s belief that weight could be moved — the proverbial "next year" might not be this year, but it’s not far behind it, either. It's going to happen.
After Game 1, FS1 will air "Confessions of a Cubs Fan,” a documentary that chronicles the history of suffering and explores the psychology of Cubs fanhood in these bizarre (see: winning) times.
One question the documentary poses is as simple as it is confounding: What would happen if the Cubs — the team that is most synonymous with losing — won?
Forget the party in Wrigleyville that lasts two weeks straight and the parade down State Street that’ll make the Bulls and Blackhawks' championship parades look like suburban council meetings.
Losing is part of the core identity of the Cubs and frankly, part of the allure of being a Cubs fan is being part of that suffering. There’s something masochistic about it all from the outsider’s perspective, but self-torture, even in the most unnecessary realms, is a Chicago trademark.
Why? Because there’s a bond in misery. (If only there was a catchier saying for that …)
It’s tantric. The longer you suffer, the more cathartic the celebration will be.
But all celebrations end.
Chicagoans (and non-Chicagoans) become Cubs fans for hundreds of reasons. In the last two decades, Sammy Sosa’s home run chase left me as the only Frank Thomas fan at the lunch table and the magical run (and tragic end) to the 2003 season put a lot more people in blue hats. There have been spurts of success since that have kept fans engaged, but the Theo Epstein, Joe Maddon era brought on another truckload of converts.
All will have to jostle with the same question: Will it be as fun to be a Cubs fan after the tightly-wound spring is released?
No one can know, because frankly, few have given it serious consideration. Certainly, this article will elicit comments that such exploration is testing fate and jinxing the team (a wonderful compliment for this prose but nonetheless an utterly ridiculous notion).
The best example to look to for an idea of what might happen is in Boston, where the Red Sox, with new ownership, a classic-but-updated ballpark, a big payroll and Theo Epstein, broke their curse in 2004 and became one of baseball’s model franchises in the decade that followed.
The World Series win also emboldened perhaps the most insufferable fans in American sports to up their game.
The nice story turned dark.
Perhaps Cubs fans can avoid that same fate. Perhaps they’ll stay lovable even when they’re not losers.
Or maybe they’ll take the success (and the more success that’s likely to come), and make a full heel turn. The social-media driven world of sports is cynical towards success and the Cubs become the hateable winners. Perhaps the ruthless commercialism pushed by the team’s owners, the Ricketts family, will finally extinguish the magic of Wrigley — a quintessential part of Cubs fandom.
We don’t know, and we can only wait to find out.
