Waveland Blues

“Do they still play the blues in Chicago when baseball season rolls around? When the snow melts away do the Cubbies still play in their ivy covered burial ground?” - Steve Goodman

Yeah…yeah, they still do. Believe me, I watched them play a whole nine inning game on Sunday. They had uniforms and announcers and everything. They even won.

What still kills me about Steve Goodman's song "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" is that, even though it's twenty five years old, every word of it is true to this day. This post has nothing to do with organic cooking or shopping or living. My mind’s been on something of an overload since I watched an HBO special on the fans of the Chicago Cubs called “Wait ‘Til Next Year”.

See I like sports but I’m not what one would call a general sports fanatic. I don’t watch Sports Center very often. ESPN’s handy on occasion but certainly not the end all be all. I do like to watch golf. I think racing (horses and cars) is ridiculous. The truth is that I don’t follow sports so much as I follow teams. Specifically, I’m fanatical about Kentucky football and basketball and worst of all, Chicago Cubs Baseball.

It’s easy being a Kentucky basketball fan. The worst of times, like the past couple years, would be cause for absolute celebration among ninety percent of college basketball programs. We win national titles every few years. Hell, we expect to win national titles and we go nuts like it’s never happened before every time we do.

Kentucky football, well, it’s not entirely unlike being a Cubs fan but there’s a huge difference. Right about the time everything starts going to shit, we all breathe a big sigh of relief because we know basketball season’s right around the corner. As a Cubs fan that big sigh only ever comes on opening day because it’s the only day of the season when we can say with absolute certainty that our team will at least be tied for first place if they win. That’s all we get.

I’ve had my share of disappointments at the hands of the Cubs. They’ve been commonplace throughout history. I wasn’t around for the Lou Brock trade or Ron Santo and the black cat in the fall of ’69. I don’t remember Fergie Jenkins or Ernie Banks and I was still too young to understand what Steve Garvey did to us in ’84. I remember ’89 though.

I remember being so excited because the eighties were kind of mediocre and ultimately devastating for UK Basketball. The Cubs playing in the postseason was the first time one of my teams had a real chance to win a title. It was over before it started. The Giants (with Will Clark and his damn gum and his eye black) knocked us out in five games. I happened so quick I didn’t have time to be crushed. That was it until 2003, which gave me the biggest disappointment I’ve ever had watching sports. Screw the '92 Duke game. This is the one that still stings.

I wasn’t in Chicago the night Steve Bartman got in the way of that foul ball but I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. A really close friend of mine had just died a few weeks prior and I was at the beginning of what would prove to be the most trying 365 day period of my life. The events of that series were like just a little extra salt in an all ready gaping wound. It’s funny to me that, through everything that happened that year, I remember a baseball game amongst it all.

What’s funny is that Kentucky could win another national title in basketball and I’ll go crazy with everyone else. They could win fifteen straight, send all John Wooden’s records down the toilet and I’ll be happy as a clam. But I’ll probably do it from the comforts of my own living room. If the Cubs just make it to the World Series, I’ll go sleep on Waveland Avenue. I’ll go back to eating red meat and hot dogs and disgusting greasy food for a week just to get a breath of the atmosphere that would be Chicago watching their boys get a shot at that title.

Would I really do all that? Maybe. But even if I didn’t…well I don’t think it would change my life or anything but it would be one of those days that I would always be able to say exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing.

I wanna write about this a little bit more but I’ll have to do it later. I’m sleepy. I blame my grandfather for the whole thing. I remember watching games on WGN with him and my grandmother from the time I was really little. It’s amazing the kind of effect that sports can have on a community. Now and then it gets crazy but most of the time it’s very cool and occasionally it’s amazing.