“You’ve reported that your boyfriend is a Cubs fan, and while I don’t expect this to comfort him, I thought I’d share how I have dealth with the identical malady. From the time I was six or seven in the late ’40s and on through the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, I rooted for the Cubs. My Chicago buddies adopted other teams – an easier, softer way that I found unseemly. Of course, the reward for my die-hard loyalty was zip. Year after year after year after year of dismal disappointment. “Why are you doing this,” I asked myself one day. “Why are you going to “beautiful” Wrigley Field, buying their beer, scarfing their peanuts and wearing their logo? If the Cubs are pathetic losers, what does that make you?”
So I quit the Cubs and I quit baseball. I stopped reading box scores and checking the standings. I didn’t have the heart to cheer for another team, so I quit the whole thing. This year, I didn’t watch a single regular or playoff game. When conversations turned to the Cubs, I absented myself, which in the last couple of months has added up to solitude aplenty.
Did I want the Cubs to win? Sure I did. But I couldn’t avoid the certainty that once again they would find a way to lose.
Your boyfriend needs to know that my strategy, while helpful, does not mean the pain will end. I feel it. I always will. But as with a bad tooth, the agony is less when I don’t fiddle with it.”
Actually, the boyfriend reports under the influence of some beverages late last night that he finally believes he has become a true Cubs fan. Now he knows the true calling, the fundamental identity of the followers of the Cubs. He has been initiated into the fellowship. He has been baptized.
The Dish 