Patiently, a Cubs fan waits, waits

Oct. 15, 1989

By STEVE SHENDER

The Bay Bridge Series, as it's already known and will forever be remembered, is going to be a good one, I'm sure, but it's not one I'm going to write home about.

Home is Chicago. To be more precise, it's a patch of real estate bounded by Clark and Addison streets and Waveland and Sheffield avenues on the city’s north side.

I left Chicago a long time ago, with no regrets, but I never left Wrigley Field. I spent too many happy afternoons there to say goodbye to the place.

One of my brightest memories of Wrigley, in fact, is of a spring afternoon in 1963. I arrived at the park after school, late in the first game of a double-header, to watch the Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants - and go on to whip them in the second game.

I think the Cubs swept the series with the Giants during that home stand.

It didn't matter, of course. The Cubs finished somewhere around the bottom of the National League heap that season, as they had been doing for as long as I had been following them, which up to that point was about 12 or 13 of my 18 years.

And that didn't matter either, because nobody ever really expected the Cubs to finish higher than seventh or eighth in the league. We were exultant if the team finished in fifth place, which was considered a moral victory in those days. Fifth place would prompt cries of "Wait 'til next year! They’ll finish fourth!"

But no, the team managers would do something brilliantly comedic, like trade away Lou Brock to St. Louis for Ernie Broglio. And the Cubs would go tumbling back into the league cellar, despite the best and often heroic efforts of players like Billy Williams, Ron Santo and the sainted Ernie Banks.

The Cubs even had pitcher Ken Holtzman once, but of course, they unloaded him just as he was getting good. They were destiny’s team - destined for perpetual mediocrity.

No matter, I rooted for them anyway. I listened to night-time away games on a transistor radio under the covers of my bed when I was supposed to be going to sleep. I hurried home from school to watch games on WGN TV when the Cubs were playing at Wrigley during the week and I couldn’t get to the park. I lived and died on every pitch. WGN announcer Jack Brickhouse’s "Hey, hey!" when Banks or Williams clobbered one into the bleachers or over the wall was music to my ears.

Brickhouse would erupt with similar frenzied exclamations when a player for the White Sox socked one out at Comiskey Park, across town on the city's south side. I never went to the south side, which was as familiar to me as outer Mongolia, and I hated the White Sox, but I didn’t hold Brickhouse’s enthusiasm against him. I knew he had to earn a living.

A second cousin of mine rooted for the more distant and alien Cardinals. I could never understand his aberrant behavior. He had no ties to St. Louis that I knew of. It might have had something to do with his family moving to Skokie, but I don't think so. More likely, it was a birth defect.

My cousin, of course, figured I was defective. Why root for a team that was never going to play in the World Series, no way, no how? He was later rewarded for his opportunism several times over.

I'm still waiting to be rewarded for my unquestioning loyalty to the Cubs.

But I don't root for the Cubs because I think they're going to win. I root for them because I was born a Cubs fan, and I'll die a Cubs fan. It’s as simple - and as impenetrable - as that.

The National League playoffs were tough for people like me - an emotional roller coaster. The Cubs were up; they were down.

Our hopes would rise with every run the Cubs scored, only to be dashed in short order by the timely, booming bats of Kevin Mitchell, Terry Kennedy, Matt Williams and the awesome Will Clark.

Our elation at the Cubs' successes was always tempered by our fear of the debacle awaiting them just around the corner, at the Giants’ next at-bat - and our fears were mostly realized.

We hoped against all odds, even as the noose was slipped around our necks in the top of the ninth on Monday at Candlestick. For one last, brief, shining moment, it seemed that the Chicago Cubs, the Lazaruses of 1989, would come back yet again.

But of course, they didn't. That only happens in the movies, or to the Dodgers. This is real life. This is what it's really like rooting for the Cubs.

I'll be watching with interest as the Giants face off against the A's. I'll be rooting for the Giants, in fact. I hate the American League.

But for me, it's just another World Series. As opposed to the World Series - the one I’ve been waiting for since the year I was born.

For Cubs fans, the National League pennant is the Holy Grail. We yearn for it, but we don’t expect to grasp it. We wait for a World Series at Wrigley like Jews wait for the Messiah.

Have faith. Someday he'll come. With a powerful bat and a righteous arm. Someday. Wait 'til next year. Next year at Wrigley Field.

What we'll do if the Cubs ever reach the promised land, I don't know.

One thing's certain: Our lives will never be the same.