Momma....... don't let your babies grow up to be Cub fans....

  Don't take my Cub card, I'm not resigning from the Union or jumping ship in anyway.  Rather, this is a letter to the all parents whose newest arrivals will soon be bundled up in Cubbie blue.  Don't do it.  Don't subject the newest addition to your family to the misery of Cubdom.  I've only been a Cub fan for 23 years and I've already experienced enough hell and heartbreak to last a lifetime.  Me?  Heck. what about the older generation of Cubs fans?  What about the ones who had to experience the gut wrenching collapse in 1969.  For those of you who are too young to remember, The Cubs were ten and a half games up in the division in September and blew every bit of that lead to an upstart franchise known as the New York Mets.  This is the nature of Cubdom in a nutshell.  It's a spooky place where black cats run past the collective psyche of a tortured fan base every summer and sometimes, in October.  Hell, a black cat actually ran past poor Ron Santo as he stood in the on deck during a fateful night at old Shea Stadium way back in 1969.  For all of us younger Cub fans, our 1969 moment occurred on two October nights in the year 2003.  Can you imagine watching the team that you love blow a trip to the World Series in just 48 grueling hours?  You can if you're a Cub fan.  And if you're a Cub fan those moments in both 1969 and 2003 hurt as much as they did in real time.  I won't even mention 1984, we've all seen the footage of the ball dribbling between Leon Durhams legs.  We've all cursed the footage of Steve Garvey circling the bases at Jack Murphy Stadium after his walk off homer in game four of the NLCS.  I'm sure Steve Garvey is a decent fellow, but I want to pummel him every time I see him running the bases with his fist in the air.  Garvey, you son of a....... For me, I still can't watch that foul pop sailing towards Bartman without those feelings of loss and or deflation bubbling to the surface.  New parents, this is what you're about to inflict on your newborn son or your newborn daughter.  Does any child need to be inducted into this misery?  Yes I know that Tom Ricketts earned a few style points and a few inches of renewed rope by hiring Theo Epstein.  But is Theo immune to the perils of  Cubdom?  Didn't we celebrate the arrival of Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker once upon a time?  They were baseball men too and they thought they were brave enough to look Cubdom in its mystical blue eye and break the curse or the spell or whatever the heck we call it.  I worry that Theo, like Dusty and Lou, will ultimately turn to dust.  I worry that Theo will ultimately turn into a defenseless blob of baseball stupid just like Lou and Dusty did.  Look at Lou Piniellas' last few years if you think I'm overstating.  I beg of you, future parents, don't do this to your kids.  Don't make them go through this hell.  And in case the national media is wondering; we take the heartbreaks of 69, 84, and 03 to heart because success is a fleeting thing to a Cub fan.  We don't get many Octobers around here and we don't get many chances to complete for Baseballs holy grail.  The Cubs are not the Yankees, they don't fall down the mountain and start climbing upward again.  This is where this so called pressure comes from; the very same pressure that turned Dusty Baker in a bitter self deluded lush.  The same pressure that turned Uncle Lou into a burned out, babbling hunk of ineptitude.  For us Cub fans, it's Everest or bust.  That's how we've been bred.  To a Cub fan, success is sort of like the mythical Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects.  Sometimes it's here and then poof.... it's gone.  It's not that I don't want the next generation of Cub nation to join the rank and file on Clark and Addison every summer, I do.  If you parents are intent on dressing your little ones in Cub gear and taking them to Mesa and then to Wrigley a few times a year, let me make one suggestion; a good psychiatrist.  Welcome aboard.