Going Down With the Ship

Rather than provide an umpteenth photo of another blank faced Cub, sitting erect and alone in a shadowy and abandoned dugout, or another sorry snapshot of broken, jerseyed civilians, heads in hands, on bars, and towards the sky in disbelief, I felt that perhaps the image of the L flag--after a season covered so thoroughly in blue W's--was the most telling picture of all. The W became the signal of a new era this year, of a new franchise. This was a team that always seemed to win the close games. And the improbable ones.

In a season where the W flag became more than a mere indicator of daily success--a season where it became the embodiment of that perpetually elusive goal--ultimately, it was the blue cloth with the white L that reigned supreme once again. So now we are left shamed by that W that flew so unwavering and confident throughout the summer. It is our scarlet letter. I saw dozens of them still plastered in storefronts and hanging limply from apartment porches as my red-line train limped north towards Rogers Park on Sunday morning.

I felt... tired.

And so did the rest of Wrigleyville on that appropriately grey and gusty afternoon. It was the first real sign of the impending cold. Another fitting reminder that the summer and all of its dizzying highs had now vanished in an instant, nowhere to be found.

In a season which saw increased debate over the necessity of even flying the L flag, with complaints that it promoted a losing attitude--it appears as though that particular symbol now stands as the sole remaining artifact of a year that as recent as last Wednesday, seemed saturated with a sense of championship entitlement.

This was supposed to be ours, and we were supposed to have a darn fun time getting it.

While I stood at the bar of the Dark Horse on Sheffield Saturday night, conversing with a season ticket holder as we nervously gulped down our beer, an eerily prophetic image was suddenly displayed across several of the flat-screens perched around the pub.

You see, as the manager struggled to sync all of the televisions to the HD feed, he accidentally set some of the screens to the TNT HD channel. Perhaps at the behest of Ted Turner in some cruel and utterly surreal practical joke, TNT was airing the James Cameron epic Titanic that evening. And wouldn't you know it, we were just in time for the climax.

Just as the Cubs were preparing to take the field, we were stuck watching the infamous luxury liner well into its descent, jutting out of the water and already half-way submerged, digitally rendered bodies leaping off into the icy water below.

Now if that's not the biggest metaphoric punch in the gut you've ever heard...

Of course the irony was not lost on many of us. There were groans, shouts to change the channel. But these were the complaints of people who had already accepted their collective fate. You just knew, right from the jump-off, that this night was to be no better than the two previous. There would be no saving face or living to fight another day. This team was already belly-up and sinking fast. It was time to usher the women and children towards safety and deploy the lifeboats. It was time to abandon ship.

Of course I didn't vocalize such blatant Cubs blasphemy, the type of attitude that legions of cock-eyed optimists in Cubdom regard with a particularly malicious brand of disdain.

But I watched the game like I watched most of the 163 before it. I yelled. I clapped. I hit things.

We all did. What else could we do? That sense of entitlement, of being owed a championship and all that comes with it, had been replaced with a painstakingly familiar feeling. A feeling of obligation. Of duty.

A duty to go down with the ship.

It's sort of like staring at a car wreck or a skateboarding accident: even if you want to, you just can't look away.

I have always been frustrated and even annoyed with the more blindly optimistic Cub fans. Not all of them, but those that have helped sculpt us into caricatures of ourselves with their incessant "This is the year!" and "It's Gonna Happen" posturing. But you know what?

It was hard to fault them this go round.

Because it was the year. It was going to happen. I'm pretty sure I thought so anyway. After the lengthy list of miraculous games the Cubs compiled over a six-month span, it simply made sense.

But all that's over with now. We've been left to wander aimlessly through the nuclear fallout. To pick through the rubble. And perhaps what makes this particular disaster different than disasters past is that this one might be irreparable. Cub fans, a good deal of them anyway, are severely furious. Fed up. There is talk of mutiny. Of packing jerseys away in the attic. Of burning merchandise. And to think, it only took a century.

Honestly, when Spring Training rolls around, most of them will be back. It's the nature of the beast. But perhaps this time there will be a calculated disinterest. A more casual, less taxing fanaticism. A distance generated from being burned just one too many times.

And perhaps that's just what the franchise needs.

So until then, I leave you with this quote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. --A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind"