Monday, October 6, 2008

six ways of looking at a cubs fan


It's like battered wives' syndrome, my friend Melissa says.  Why else would we keep coming back?  Year after year, they disappoint us.  We pray that next time, this time will be better.  And when they fail us?  We swear to ourselves that never again will we believe in them, but of course we do.  Because there's always next year.

I bought a shirt one year.  It said Chicago Cubs 2000: Our century has arrived.  And on some level, I believed it.  We won our last World Series in 1908.  Statistically speaking, it was only a matter of time before someone took us to our first World Series victory of the new millennium, right?

If you believe in poetry, and I do, this year was the perfect year for us.  This year was exactly one hundred years after our last championship.  And what a season we had.  It seemed like the planets had aligned properly, finally, at last.  We went into the post-season and I was feeling confident in a way that I'd never felt going into October.  We were so good this year that we were going to sail right into our destiny, right?

I don't need blind Tiresias to tell me my Cubs are a tragedy.  I don't.  But this year?  I believed.  I really did.  And so I did the only thing I could do in the wake of such disappointment: I wrote you haiku.

Enjoy.  Or: don't.

six ways of looking at a cubs fan

nineteen eighty-four
game one slaughter: thirteen - zip!
larry bowa's legs.

nineteen eighty-nine
sandberg! hail, mark: full of grace
boys of zimmer, why?

nineteen ninety-eight
sammy sosa's home run king!
wild card to nowhere.

two thousand and three
five outs to the world series!
foul ball to bartman?

two thousand seven
soriano, ramirez, lee:
did you lose your bats?

two thousand and eight
wow! best record in our league
dempster? no, dumpster.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the last few decades in a nutshell. SIGH!

Maryanne Stahl said...

sad but really well done! (the haiku, not the cubs)