Welcome to Next Year

First appeared on April 19, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

In case you haven’t checked the calendar recently, let me be the first to welcome you to next year. Sure your phone says it’s 2016, but history will remember this as ‘next year’. Archaeologists in the foothills of the Andes recently unearthed a scroll containing an original version of the Mayan calendar. In addition to calling for the end of the world in 2012, this new document includes a small asterisk next to a phrase loosely translated as: “And if life should somehow continue, a small bear will conquer the world in 2016”.

For over 100 years now, beleaguered Cub fans have found solace in the battle cry ‘wait till next year!’ Let me be the first to say this excuse has run its course. Gone the way of the dinosaur, Ivory Billed Woodpecker and any hope Donald Trump had of becoming our next president. Welcome to next year friends, the year your Chicago Cubs finally get it done.

Did I write this same column last year at roughly this exact date? Sure, but we in the part-time-pretend sports columnist business don’t dwell on the past. We look to the future, because the future is rife with fodder for columns, commentary and, thanks to the information age ushering in the age of short attention spans, ridiculous predictions nobody will remember in three months anyway.

So next year turned on the calendar and you decided action was necessary, considering you’ve spent the better part of 30 years waiting for it. In your haste to squeeze as much as possible into the only next year you’re ever going to see, you threw the kids in the car and headed north as the rest of humanity was thinking south. Your goal? To see all five Great Lakes in one week by car, and return home alive and un-divorced.

Fueled by your desire to provide an invaluable learning opportunity for the hatchlings, you made your way from the angry shores of Superior down to Lake Michigan only to have your four-year-old ask if people in Michigan always swim wearing mittens and scarves. Then it was on to Lake Erie where your eight-year-old had the epiphany that it doesn’t really matter where you go, all the Great Lakes are probably going to look pretty much the same.

Basking in the manufactured world of Shedd’s Aquarium, you failed as a father when trying to explain the importance of the Stinkpot Turtle’s role in the ecosystem. This was only compounded after you found yourself unloading on the twenty-something guide who wasted half your tour building a case for Abba’s inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Still, you somehow survived it all, undaunted and filled with the hope only a next year can bring.

The Cubs have great pitching and incredible offensive firepower. They have the brightest front office mind in baseball and a manager who boasts the perfect balance of baseball knowledge and weirdness. Of course baseball knowledge is a necessity for, you know, winning games. It’s the weirdness factor that is so undervalued in the search for managerial talent today. And it is Joe Maddon’s exponential weirdness that should help a young team navigate the minefield ahead. A minefield dotted with the pressures of a World Series, and the mental fatigue a 162 game season will undoubtedly bring.

The result of all of this is should be a fully loaded steam train barreling down the tracks come October. One doing so with so much force there isn’t a goat, cardinal or Kansas City Royal strong enough to derail it; for this is it, there are no more next years friend.

© 2016 Eric Walker Williams

Note to Cubs Fans: Beware, Curse Ahead

First appeared on October 14th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

It’s not every day you find a goat blocking rush hour traffic. Still there he was. Standing right in front of your car, trying his best to train a wary eye on you while maintaining focus on the grass in his mouth. He chews on, wobbly-headed and busy reading you like a book.

A Cubs fan your whole life, you’ve suffered through forty plus years of futility. Forty plus years of aimlessly wandering a postseason desert. Forty years of this hairy little guy owning you. From those undersized horns and empty eyes down to his distinguished tassel, you know full well he’s just another bitter soul. Bitter for playing second fiddle all these years to his superstar cousin the sheep. And for what? When’s the last time anyone wore wool after all?

Your Cubs have National League Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year and Cy Young in the bag, but somehow it’s not enough. After 40 years, you want more. And here they stand, four wins away from their first World Series appearance since 1945.

The expectations of failure have haunted you since the All Star Break. They’re quick with a bar of soap first thing in the shower and from the passenger seat on the way to work, they grumble that maybe this new talk radio phase of yours has gone on a bit too long. They trudge beside you up the stairs, through a maze of cubicles all the way to the tiny one you share with Ed from Accounting, the one prized for being closest to the Men’s room, the same one littered with pictures of Ed’s nine year old son, the future Noble Laureate.

In 2007 you drove all the way to New Orleans and paid a Voodoo Lady $500 to lift the curse. And, after verifying your personal check numbers with her roommate, a part-time soothsayer who moonlighted as a bank teller, Madam Zydeco took the picture of the Bartman Catch you brought along, set it on fire, spread the ashes in a bowl of milk and told you to drink it. Three months later the Cubs were swept by the Diamondbacks in the NLDS.

Now, as you sit behind the wheel with a barrage of blaring horns reigning down on you, you’re seriously thinking about running this goat over. The Russian’s elbowed us out of Syria, why shouldn't you be able to nudge a brazen Bovidae out of the road?

Your belief ran hot and cold all season. Between Rizzo’s 30 home runs and 100 RBI’s, Bryant’s Franchise Rookie Record for homers and Jake Arietta’s inhuman second half stretch, it was all coming together and yet you resisted the urge to become fully invested. After all, you’ve seen the end of this one far too many times.

The experts say this was never supposed to be the year anyway. Its Maddon’s first season and the Cubs, despite being loaded with talent, are just too young. “Don’t put yourself through the pain of the NLCS,” Ed advises, shoulder to shoulder in your cubicle, “Why don’t you come watch Ed Jr. instead? He’s doing a public performance at the community theater, a solo piece on the Abacus he wrote himself.”

Seventy years ago a ticket taker outside Wrigley did what any right thinking human would do and refused to let a goat into a baseball game. Since that time it’s been total darkness on the Northside. And now, the chance of a lifetime presents itself. The chance to erase 70 years of futility with a pair of squealing of tires. After all, they’ve come this far, just a nudge is all they need.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

As the Cubs tempt fate, fans brace for the inevitable

First appeared on August 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

With Donald Trump still leading in the polls, Hillary forwarding Top Secret emails and the Cubs winners in ten of their last eleven; its official, the end of the world is upon us.

Turns out that uncle, the one with the ‘Licensed Sasquatch Hunter’ bumper sticker, was right all along. The world will end before Washington starts making sense. For years he took you out to the woods and showed you how to hunt and fish, claiming when the end comes, only the strong, those who can build fires, find fresh meat and tie a barrel hitch, will survive.

By firelight he told you how the moon landing was filmed in a California basement. A two-bedroom ranch owned by the Night Manager of a Denny’s in the San Fernando Valley. “Surprisingly huge basement for a Ranch.”

He swore the Soviets killed Elvis because there was a hidden capitalistic agenda in his lyrics and that cheeseburgers in American schools are green because the FDA was injecting them with human growth hormones. “Reagan was tired of losing to East Germany in the Olympics.”

But that was thirty years ago and not only are you older now, you are also wiser. You know the world most likely isn’t going to end anytime soon. You are also smart enough to realize the Cubs can’t win the World Series this year because this is the year of the sheep, which is basically a goat, and we all know how that’s worked out so far.

Still, the Northsiders are stirring the hearts and minds of this great nation and that’s the part the rest of baseball loves most. The rest of baseball, lounging in their monogramed Turkish bathrobes, sipping Arnold Palmer’s while leafing through dog-eared copies of an ‘Idiots Guide to Dealing with Post-season Success.’

And there they linger, in only the way they can, pretending to read but all the while waiting. Waiting with baited breath for that priceless moment the Cubs fall apart, crushing the hearts of millions, the eternally downtrodden, yet again. A train wreck indeed.

Meaningful baseball has become an oxymoron for Cubs fans, a mythical figure most have spent the better part of a lifetime searching for. There have been glimpses. Grainy images of a foul ball being prematurely snatched up from the stands and a black cat scurrying across an infield. For generations it has loomed on the horizon, just close enough to tease, yet somehow always gone by September.

It’s been over 100 years since a championship last came to the Northside. That magical run was witnessed by then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. You know Teddy, the Rough Rider who charged up San Juan Hill, a feat so lasting he remains the answer to the most popular question posed to every Ranger stationed at Mount Rushmore. Exhausted families, sunblock pasted faces, herded together in khaki shorts and loud print shirts, cajoling their restless young ones to take in the powerful artistry that is Rushmore, all the while wondering aloud, “Who’s the one next to Jefferson again?”

But despite the Cubs’ newfound fortunes, don’t expect to find the four horsemen galloping down your street anytime soon, it is after all only the third week of August. There is still plenty of time for a full-blown collapse. One so monumental it triggers widespread earthquakes. Cataclysmic tremors that move mountains and cause rocks to fall down upon those hiding amongst them.

And while you’re thinking we’re in trouble either way, just remember the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the National League they could take a couple weeks off and still wake up in first place. This means, Armageddon or not, the Cubs are once again destined to leave fans feeling undeniably inadequate.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

"Progress" comes to Clark and Addison

First appeared on July 11, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

A day spent at Wrigley is a day well spent. Forget Florida and its meandering rivers of traffic, or the great outdoors and its fabled tranquility, mosquitoes and near constant threat of bear attacks. Wrigley Field is another world, one you long to visit more and wish others knew less knew about.

So you stand shoulder to shoulder, sharing a prolonged silence with this mass of humanity fate has thrown together in a steel Velveeta box on rails. You avoid eye contact, conversation and interaction of any kind, best not to invite the one you suspect is seriously considering jabbing you in the stomach for your wallet.

Meanwhile the El goes on, listing from side to side while clacking down its tracks. As if you’ve traded an Abraham Lincoln for a ticket back in time, the alleyways and fire escapes of the Brownstones roll past. The homes huddling together and muscle of the trestle that splits them are ripped from a Sinclair novel. Your mind is busy tucking all these images away for later, as your nose has serious questions about the availability of warm water and soap in the Windy City.

For you, this is more than a train ride. It’s therapy. For nothing takes the sting out of a rant from your boss like reminiscing about Wrigley. Forget the overpriced vendors, long lines at the John and warm beer, the only souvenirs you’ll take home are the nostalgic sights and sounds. Lasting images such as the silhouette of downtown cast against an ocean blue sky, or a young father teaching his daughter how to jump a turnstile.

And when your stop arrives and the doors shoosh open, you turn to embrace a scene you didn’t want to leave in the first place. However, instead of an old friends smile or slice of Grannie’s Apple Pie, you’re greeted with something from a Third World Country racked by devastation.

Dump trucks lumber back and forth, navigating a minefield of port-a-potties. With all the synchronicity of a Broadway show, construction workers move seamlessly around each other. It’s the scourge of renovation. A cancer that threatens all you hold dear.

No matter the form, we as humans struggle with change. It’s in our DNA, just ask the boys over at Coca-Cola. Our lives become so choreographed and photocopied that change has a way of reaching out and slapping us every time. A flag goes up, a flag comes down. A presidential candidate who doesn’t tell us what we expect to hear. Renovating Wrigley is like putting lipstick on the Mona Lisa grumbles the old timer behind you.

For whatever reason, your mind is drawn to Millard Fillmore. A stuffed shirt who did little of consequence aside from sleep in the White House for four years, old Mill’s on record as saying one shouldn’t accept change as progress. And as you bask in the glow of the jumbo-tron that now towers over left-center, you know that no truer words have ever been spoken.

Your eyes used to marvel at the hand-operated scoreboard or wander along the bricks until they got lost in the Ivy. Now they’re blinded by 3900 square feet of LED. If this is progress, they can have it. You have satellite TV, microwaveable meals and a one-car detached waiting for you at home.

Not unlike a bad sunburn, we’re often reminded that progress for some is a kick in the shin for others. And yet, it remains our destiny. In the end you’re left to realize that perhaps, not unlike beauty, progress too lies in the eye of the beholder.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

A Smashing Start to "Next Year"

First appeared on April 11th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

I don’t ask for much. I’d like a good hot dog and at least one of my children to follow directions the first time. I’d also like flushing toilets in Wrigley and the sports world to stop heckling her like she’s the subject of a Comedy Central roast.

I’m not in construction. The only thing I build are sentences and that’s done on a part time basis and somewhat pedestrian level. But I am a sports fan and I know enough to realize when Opening Day rolls around its best to have your ducks in a row. It’s not like the boys in Chicago had a short off-season after all.

So you pack yourself into a car and point it north for a little slice of heaven the outside world knows as Wrigley Field. You do this knowing full well the baseball gods will shine on you even though it is April and April in Chicago can sometimes require great bravery, or at the very least polar survival gear.

But Ernest Shackleton you are not, you are a Cubs fan and you don’t ask for much. You want a cold beer and a warm dog, a spot out of the wind and a toilet that works. The radio is alive with stories of civil wars fought in countries devoid of natural resources and any qualitative reasons for living there. And while you depart with the full understanding your journey is likely to end in heartbreak and misery, you harbor strong faith in the front office, despite their inability to hire a qualified plumber, and besides, this is ‘next year’ and you want to be able to tell your grandchildren you were there.

But an unexplained postponement leaves you flustered because, not unlike Washington, you are left choosing between a woman who hid her emails from the public and a man so elitist he believes everyone in the U.S. should be above accepting a helping hand. Talk about limited options indeed.

The Action 2 News broadcasts shots of construction crews delivering plastic outhouses to Wrigley, which only brings more inspiration to those jeering her. The jokes keep coming faster than Republican presidential candidates and while she may be undeniably stunning and the closest thing the sports world has to historical perfection, she remains incredibly fragile and self-conscious in the face of her multimillion-dollar renovation.

The Action 2 guy says something about the postponement being linked to a malfunction in the bathrooms on Opening Day before making a joke about a goat and you wonder if his hair is real and try imagining Shackleton’s crew using plastic toilets while crossing the Antarctic. Why can’t they just open the doors? You drove two hours and would be happy to just sit and watch the grass grow under the lights; after all games at Wrigley have always been more of an unavoidable distraction anyway.

So ‘Next Year’ is off to a smashing start as you take a twenty dollar cab back to the parking garage you had to move some stocks around and mortgage your house just to use for a couple hours. And as you limp out of town with your NXTYR vanity plate and Ernie Banks bobble head wobbling on the dashboard, you do so realizing ‘pottygate’ has made the Cubs the laughing stock of baseball. And while it’s not an entirely unfamiliar position, it is one they don’t normally assume until the first or second week of June.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Merry Christmas from the Sports World

First appeared on December 18, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

For you Christmas lost its meaning in third grade when the Santa outside 3D got mad at you for crushing the pack of cigarettes he’d stashed in his front pocket. And as his profane string of insults throttled your virgin ears, they arrived riding the strangest of smells.

A toxic potpourri that would remain undiscovered until many years later, where at a gathering of so called friends in a dark college apartment, full of crushed cigarettes and hormone-powered profanities, you found yourself bitten by the Wild Turkey for the first time.

Today the sermons sound simple and ring true. Speeches about caring for others and giving to the less fortunate, but for you Christmastime remains frozen in time. It’s the season to wish for the things you don’t have. Things that seem within reach but for a variety of reasons remain at arm’s length. And so you still compose lists in your head, your own personal get back for that rag tag Santa who shattered the world as you once knew it.

Those in the sports world profess to be selfless human beings, but we know deep inside the depths of their souls, in a place no probing journalist has ever found, lurks an ugly Grinch-like desire to lie, steal and cheat their way to the top of Mount Crumpit. Facts are facts, you don’t get to the top without a little of the green guy in you.

With this in mind, coaches and teams are not above wishing for things that could make them better. Tom Crean’s list begins, “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is someone taller than 6’8 who can play.” Meanwhile, eighty miles to the north, Matt Painter is up late baking gingerbread cookies to leave out with his short note, the one asking for a chance to play North Florida again.

John Calipari’s list is a bit longer. He wants an undefeated season for his Kentucky Wildcats capped by a National Championship, and he’d like it to arrive as soon as possible, that way he has enough time to enjoy it before the NCAA strips it away. Indiana fans want a chance to play the Wildcats again, while Kentucky’s faithful have written the North Pole hoping for things like some new socks, a professional sports franchise other than UK’s basketball team and more front porch space.

Frank Vogel wants his team to play hard, fight every night and scrap their way into the Playoffs. Apparently his list includes an opening round bloodbath at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers as well. Meanwhile, every Pacer fan on earth wants them to lose every game by 50 and stink their way into the lottery where they might luck out and pick up one of Kentucky’s bench players.

The Colts are asking Santa to bring Andrew Luck a pair of glasses so that he might see the opposing team’s secondary while Reggie Wayne is hoping to find a new pair of knees under the tree on Christmas morning.

For Cubs fans Christmas came early with the signing of free agent Jon Lester and for Lester’s kids, well there’s really no reason for them to make out a Christmas list now is there? But Cubs fans have been down this road before, they know it’s too soon to talk World Championship. This means they’ll just bide their time and wait for the wheels, or Lester’s arm, to fall off before their season crashes and burns up in a fiery, catastrophic and somewhat all too familiar, death.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and may God bless us everyone (even the Kentucky fans).

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

Loyalty and the NBA: Strange Bedfellows Indeed

First appeared on November 18, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

When I was in the Third Grade I had a crush on Mary Beth Stevens. She of the hair like golden shocks of wheat and dangerous blue eyes so crystal clear they cast perfect reflections of the checkerboard tile floor in the multi-purpose room. Then at recess, while Mary Beth was in a heated game of tetherball, I confessed my love only to have the cutest girl in the Fourth Grade ask me out moments later.

As a simple boy who still raced Matchbox cars and believed the Legion of Doom was in fact the greatest threat facing the world, how was I to know it was a test of my loyalty? A devious plot hatched by the Black Widow Mary Beth herself. But I stood tall and strong, like a 4’3 oak. And for two magical hours we were Charles and Diana, until Mary Beth asked me to dump her lunch tray and never spoke to me again.

Perhaps it’s no secret that, just like fashion in North Korea and the careers of most male meteorologists, loyalty is dead. It’s a powerful statement indeed and one that applies wholeheartedly to the National Basketball Association.

So LeBron is hailed for his loyalty after abandoning Cleveland only to return on a hobbled white horse with two rings earned in the service of another kingdom. How quickly it was forgotten, that ill-fated night Cleve-landers torched King James jerseys in the streets, stomping and dancing all over them. Or what about the “Witless” and “LeBum” posters they displayed when LeBron returned with the Heat?

And then there’s Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert; also known as the one welcoming James back with open arms. This after penning a scathing letter to his fan base denouncing the King 30 seconds after LeBron announced he was divorcing his “hometown” four years ago. A fickle beast loyalty is not. Loyalty is an eternal test of ones will and, when the going gets tough, the truly loyal go nowhere.

But what exactly does loyalty get one? For Cub fans it’s apparently a lifetime of disappointment, frustration and embarrassment. For members of ISIS, it’s a date with a Hellfire missile and an eternity spent looking for a glass of ice water. For Kobe Bryant it’s pumping in 31,000 points for the Lakers and dropping five championship trophies in the broom closet only to return from injury to find trade rumors flaring up after going 1-6 out of the gate.

And before we carve the NBA up for being selfish and materialistic, its best to understand professional basketball is likely a product of our own society. Sports fans, not unlike your two year old, want everything immediately. There’s no waiting in life. They don’t want to hear another one of Daddy’s sermons on patience.

They want the best coach, a franchise player, deep playoff runs and championship trophies, and if they don’t have them by the close of business, the bandwagon gets lighter and season tickets wind up on EBAY with an opening bid of twelve cents.
Loyalty is hard work and we’ve become a people who are, by and large, highly allergic to hard work. Of course there are times when loyalty pays off. For if there weren’t, who in their right mind would ever have it?

Truly rare moments that are magical and powerful and lasting and try as we might we can never get them back. Moments that often take a lifetime to reach and mere seconds to expire. And yet it’s the allure and rarity of these that keep the truly loyal in the game. Moments that keep us picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off time after time.

So here’s to you who count yourself amongst the loyal, that ever dwindling crowd of the lonely and the ridiculed, smile and wave at all those chasing empty calories, for you know your moment, far off as it may be, does in fact lie ahead somewhere.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

BREAKING NEWS: First Round exit not what Larry wanted

First appeared on May 1st, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

My dad took me to my first Indiana Pacers game at 13. It was a regular season tilt featuring Larry Bird’s World Champion Boston Celtics. And while I knew the Pacers weren’t good, finding Market Square a swirling sea of green, an army of auto mechanics and accountants shoulder to shoulder in the same Bird jerseys each swooning over Larry Legend, was completely unexpected.

The Celtics arrival had inspired the first sell out since the last time they were in town, prompting a silver haired usher to gush about the curtains finally being raised on the upper level. In the shadow of a World Champion, the Pacers played like a semi-pro team. The crowd surged with every shot Bird made, chanting his name after every pass he threaded, and cheered for every rebound he corralled. Everything about the night seemed out of place as 17,000 strong appeared to resent any resistance the Pacers put forth.

Meanwhile, from the row behind, two rosy cheeked draft experts blasted the Pacers 6’7 rookie wing for not being Steve Alford. The gangly kid from UCLA with the ears. “They should have drafted his sister, she’d help the Pacers more.” “He didn’t play for Knight, he doesn’t know basketball.” Brilliance personified.

Life is funny. Who could have known that so much of Indiana’s history as a franchise would be tied to that fateful night in 1987? Who knew that wide eyed rookie with the big ears would put the Pacers back on the map, shoot them into the Finals while sticking a finger in New York City’s eye along the way? Reggie Miller was fiery, fearless and played with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas.

And when Reggie and Larry joined forces in 1997 Pacers fans rejoiced in George Costanza-like fashion, “Worlds are colliding!” But alas Reggie’s Hall of Fame career is over leaving Larry to look on helplessly from his perch along the baseline, in the city he once dominated as a champion, reduced to watching all his hopes and dreams for a Pacers’ Title swirl down the proverbial toilet.

This unforeseen tailspin has been rife with misery and heartbreak, confounding experts while putting a once effervescent head coach firmly on edge. And as Pacer Fans everywhere hold their collective breath, waiting for the moment the Hawks realize they are the 8 seed and decide to give up and go away, everyone with a brain has reached the conclusion this current group of Pacers are not Larry and Reggie.

They don’t necessarily play together. They don’t consistently outwork opponents. They aren’t hard-nosed and seem to floudner around in an unfocused manner for most of a 48 minute game. For proof one need look no further than Hawks Forward Mike Scott, Reggie would have told a Davis boy to put him in the second row before Scott could make five three pointers in a quarter (Larry would have done it himself).

By Nature Midwestern sports fans are a tolerant lot. They’re willing to suffer through almost anything (see Cubs, Chicago). But a perceived lack of effort is taboo in the Midwest. The Pacers branded themselves with defense and hard work, but there’s been nothing ‘Blue Collar’ about them since the calendar turned 2014.

This isn’t about X’s and O’s. It’s about guts, bravado and playing fearlessly. These are qualities that allowed Larry and Reggie to excel. These are also qualities the current Indiana Pacers would be well served to develop quickly. If Paul, David, Ringo and Roy don’t come to the realization soon that nothing easy is worth having, the only thing hanging from the rafters in Banker’s Life will be a curtain blocking empty seats.


© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

Save Wrigley Field?

First appeared on July 24, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

When I was in seventh grade we circulated a petition asking one of our lunch ladies to try different deodorant, and while we generated some much needed hygienic awareness amongst many classmates and picked up a lot of signatures, we also got detention, stern lectures from both Administration and our parents, as well as the coldest hamburgers you could imagine.

So when I received a request recently to sign a petition to “Save Wrigley Field” I was somewhat confused. After all Wrigley does predate the discovery of dirt, so what could it possibly need saving from? Apparently Wrigley needs saving from itself.

Cubs ownership wants to institute $500 million in renovations to Wrigley. This demand has sparked a wrestling match between Rooftop Owners, one crabby Alderman, the Landmarks Commission and the Mayor of Chicago. According to plans, the exterior will be restored to 1938 status, a year the Cubs were swept in the World Series which is in itself surprising on multiple levels.
Wrigley is already a local landmark, but will work to achieve National Landmark Status while implementing the renovations simultaneously. The most impressive aspect of the project is that it will all be done with private money.

But as negotiations floundered, Tom Ricketts knew the trump card lay in the pocket of his David Beckham Collection, double breasted, Armani suit lined with the fur of the rare and endangered Pamir Spotted Zebra all along. But does the owner of the Chicago Cubs really want to go down in history as the man who tore down Wrigley? Did he pay $900 million for the team just to have the chance at writing an even darker chapter of history in what has already been a genuinely lackluster and laughable existence?

I suppose it’s fitting the Ricketts and the Cubs found each other considering the Ricketts family is ranked 371 out of the 400 Wealthiest People according to Forbes, this of course places them near last on the list and that’s where the team has been languishing since the day the Ricketts bought them.

Being one of only a handful who could pay cash for the Space Shuttle is proof Tom Ricketts is undoubtedly a smart man. Surely then he understands 97.8% of Cubs Fans are so because of Wrigley Field. Does anyone really believe Cubs Fans actually follow their team? The same one that hasn’t won a World Series since Teddy Roosevelt was President? The one that hasn’t appeared in a World Series since we were dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Cubs Fans live for Wrigley. They are fans because the Cubs are one of the last franchises left who embrace losing. OK, so maybe it’s not so much the losing as it is the belief that a World Series title can only be fully appreciated if preceded by a lifetime of
extreme heartache and disappointment first.

It’s the pomp and circumstance that lures Cubs Fans out in droves year after year. The fact the Cubs happen to play baseball at Wrigley Field is secondary and serves only to force people to hang around a bit longer than normal for fear of appearing rude.
Cubs Fans embrace Wrigley for all that the park stands for. Things like the Ivy, pad-less brick walls, occasional chunks of concrete falling from the ceiling of the grandstands and Bleacher Bums fumbling their way through the Seventh Inning Stretch while sharing overpriced refreshments with the heads, shoulders and laps of their fellow man. For all of mankind, the sooner those in high places realize the rare gem they have in Wrigley the better.


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© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Calgon! Take the Cubs Away!

First appeared on September 28th, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

WARNING: What you are about to read comes from a red, white and blue Cubs fan and is not intended to bring disgrace to anyone, past or present, who has played on the North Side.

Like me, channel surfers everywhere may have stumbled upon the single most disturbing event in the history of television last night. And before you guess, it wasn’t the Dancing With the Stars All Star competition or a replay of Piers Morgan's interview with a perpetually incoherent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rather it was the fact the Chicago Cubs are still playing baseball.

Finding out the Cubs are still playing baseball is like discovering Branson actually has a Neil Diamond Tribute show. And with Chicago at 59-97 it’s no stretch to say the ticket to see a fake Neil Diamond 2,000 miles from the real Las Vegas is likely hotter than anything Wrigley can offer. In fact something tells me more people would walk across the street to see how many pork rinds Honey Boo Boo can eat before throwing up than those who would actually want to see the Cubs play.

The Cubs should do their fans, Cooperstown, all competitive sports everywhere including Jai Alai and the integrity of the game a favor and stop playing baseball as soon as possible. In fact maybe the Diamondbacks could play the recently fired NFL Replacement Refs tonight in Arizona if only to give us a break from the Cubs and MLB ratings a temporary bump.

Since mid June the Cubs season has been dying a slow death; like a Billy the Kid has already emptied his Six Shooter and they’re still clinging to life with garbled groans kind of slow. Call them what you will, a hot mess, a dumpster fire or God’s gift to perpetual disappointment, the Cubs are on a fast track to whatever the next stop beyond irrelevance is. And while this isn’t uncharted territory for the Northsiders, Cubs fans have had enough and the brass at Wrigley better do something in the next 7 months or the only thing their ticket takers will be gathering next season is cobwebs.

In fact if the Cubs don't do anything before next year I’m not sure a "Free Season Ticket Night" will be enough to get people out to Wrigley. Barring a remarkable finish, this team is going to lose 100 games which means that, instead of newspapers, people will begin associating Cubs tickets with the lining of bird cages or as a cheaper option for papier-mâché.

And don't tell me to wait for next year. Waiting for next year is the single greatest marketing ploy since Publisher’s Clearinghouse or the Doublemint Twins. Besides there are no 40 somethings out there actually sitting in their parent's basement clad in Cubs garb with a copy of the 2013 schedule and calendar in hand waiting for the season to begin or Mitt Romney would have mentioned them by name during the welfare crusade he launched at his $50,000 a plate fundraiser.

But alas if we’re to raise any fingers towards the Cubs organization for their 2012 product perhaps it’s best pointed at Theo Epstein for he is the one who traded, released or reassigned almost every player the Cubs had who could hit, field or stay upright with any regularity. The good news for Epstein is Cubs fans may be a beleaguered and oft-tortured bunch but, if anything, they’re also patient. And in the interest of being fair most will wait Epstein out. After all he is seen as the man who ended the Red Sox curse.

He better hope the “trade every relevant player you have away” philosophy he’s borrowed from the Marlins organization actually pans out however because, after a 100 loss season, nothing less than a World Series win will suffice. OK, so maybe we’ll settle for an appearance. Heck even after 100 years, we’re still willing to settle for baby steps.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams