CHRIS YODER
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007

WHEN ALFONSO SORIANO'S lazy fly ball was caught on Oct. 6, the fate of the Chicago Cubs was sealed. Each October, as sure as the leaves will fall, the Cubs will break their fans' hearts.

Since the baseball club from the North Side of Chicago last won a World Series, 17 presidents have been inaugurated, man has walked on the moon for the first time, and Uni has graduated 86 classes of students.

The Cubs last won a World Series in 1908.

Two of the last three World Series champions have recently ended championship droughts of their own. The Boston Red Sox ended an 86-year drought in 2004. The Chicago White Sox ended an 88-year drought the following year. Even the Cubs' main rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, won a title last postseason.

It's not easy to root for the Cubs. Throughout their history, the Cubs have had anything but good luck. From the Billy Goat Curse to the Bartman ball, die-hard fans have had more than enough reasons to bite their fingernails.

Every year, it seems, is next year, at least when you're a Cubs fan. You'd think spending $300 million in the offseason on free agents would be good enough to buy a World Series trophy. But apparently it wasn't — the Cubs couldn't get past the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first round of the playoffs. However, it was bad baseball, not bad luck, that befell them this year.

By commiting yourself to a sports team, as I have with the Cubs, you make an emotional investment. If a team doesn't win a World Series, a Super Bowl, a World Cup, all passionate fans will be heartbroken, no matter how good the regular season was.

Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of disappointed fans, since only one team can win a championship each year. Every decade or so, a typical team will get competitive and might win a title. Cub fans, on the other hand, have waited 99 years for one, and that would make a World Series title all the sweeter.

But if your team loses all the time, a nonsports fan might ask, why root for them? Why not give up and spend your free time doing something relaxing, like sleeping?

Because, quite honestly, I can't sleep if I don't keep up with the Cubs.

Being a fan helps me appreciate the sport of baseball — as rooting for my team becomes second nature, the details become more meaningful, just as mathematicians are no longer fascinated by addition when they are taking calculus. I can think more about Carlos Zambrano's batting average with runners in scoring position because I'm not focusing on remembering how many innings are in a game.

But my loyalty lies with the Cubs even more than it does with the sport. Fans form attachments with the players on a team and hold them to a higher standard as a result. That's why players get cheered when they do well and booed when they don't. As the novelty of the sport itself wears off a month after opening day, a fan's focus shifts to his or her team and its players. It's because I'm a fan of the Cubs and not just a fan of the sport that I felt so sad when I realized the season was finally over.

So now I can watch the rest of the playoffs, and maybe root for the Colorado Rockies or the Cleveland Indians. Maybe I'll even find enough spare time to catch up on my sleep. But as a Cubs fan, there's really only one thing I can do:

Wait 'til next year.