then start watching in about 1/2 an hour after first pitch. Whenever the opposition gets a runner on, I hit the fast forward button – starting with the slowest speed, moving faster and faster if the pitcher stays in trouble. I don’t know why I do this, maybe I need the bad half innings to be overwith as quickly as possible.

When the Cards scored two runs in the 6th yesterday I turned it off and waited for my Cardinals fan I know to call me up when something good for the Cards happened…needless to say I never got that call. I feel like I’m bringing them bad Karma if something goes wrong. I either turn off the TV…switch to an Old Style from the normal Coors Light, yes I keep an Old Style reserve…anything to change the Karma.

It’s a freakin’ game. Not worth sittin’ in the bathroom listening to the toilet gurgle when you could be watching the game. Try Pat and Ron if you can’t stand to watch.

But unfortunately, well fortunately really, I live in Central Wisconsin and cant get the game on TV or radio. So what I do, and I may need professional help for this as well, is I have a computer setup in the garage so that I can listen online. Works great, but it’s starting to get a bit chilly at night. By the way, it’s in the garage so that I can actually hear the game. A house gets loud with a wife and two kids, plus the beer fridge is out there. ;)

used to be that way.

My wife and I were married in the summer of 1997, so the first Cubs season we spent watching together was 1998. She wasn’t a baseball fan when we got married. She liked to go to minor league games and drink beer and yell, so she didn’t hate the game, she just didn’t follow it. But she got trapped following the Cubs and the whole McGwire/Sosa thing in 1998 and down the stretch she got so nervous that she would cover her face with a pillow during the tight moments—especially after the Brant Brown fiasco. She says she’ll always remember me going to the computer and slumping to the floor in relief when Neifi Perez hit that home run.

But she’s not that way anymore. She can watch even the tightest moments. On the other hand, I somehow made her an Angels fan and she hasn’t had many bad moments in her Angel fan career.

EVEN WHEN I AM AT THE GAME. I read something as soon as it gets “scary” which is often every time the other team is batting. My normal routine at home is to switch to another game and check the ESPN ticker.

I am deeply disturbed but I have not been able to get past it.

Two nights ago (forgot who wrote the post on boycotting the game) I decided that even though I was inside, I’d listen to Ron and Pat instead of watching in HD – they won.

Then last night I had back-to-back parent-teacher conferences at 2 different schools miles apart and missed the entire game, “watching” the boxscore on my mobile phone – they won again.

Hmmm, maybe next game it’ll be the phone and radio on the deck with a cooler of Old Style…phone to “watch” the Brewers game, radio of course on W-G-N.

If the Cubs are winning and it’s a close game, I usually change the channel in the 9th inning. I can’t watch it. I get too tense and anxious. I’ve always taken the philosophy that it’s the result that is important rather than the watching of the result. Kind of silly, but it works for me.

If there is a critical situation I change the station. I’ll have the yahoo gamechannel on and glance at it. It really depends on just how nervous the situation makes me. I just flip constantly. And depending on how my “karma” is going I’ll watch more or less. I’m insane.

Due to health I am supposed to take my blood pressure and keep track of it every night.

If it is outside of a certain range I am to take it again in an hour.

During the 9th inning it was significantly high

An hour later it was normal.

…resigned to the worst but hoping for the best. I welcomed the horror of another walk-off loss like an old friend and scoffed at it when it did not arrive.

I think about it like this: Someday soon, in the not-too-distant future, there will be no Cubs games to watch. For better or worse, the 2008 season will be in our memories, and the players we all love will be scattered to the four corners of the Earth (or, uh, the four corners of the country, for the most part). It will be cold and grey outside (um, at least here in the Chicago area), and being able to watch baseball games every day (or thereabouts) will seem like a ridiculous luxury or a fantastic dream.

I don’t want to go all Dave Kaplan on y’all, but soak up every moment, savor every high and, yes, suffer gladly through every low. Because winter is coming and, with it, nothingness.

I get riled up over the course of a tense game, but I can never take my eyes off the TV or stop listening to the radio depending on my circumstances. In my opinion, the most nerve-wracking situations are the best to watch. I sort of like the pressure because it’s when the most unforgettable moments of a season seem to happen. But of course, the word “unforgettable” can describe something either good or bad.

Knowing what pressure feels like myself, I can never stop watching when the Cubs have a chance to succeed in very important points of each game. Everyone knows what it feels like to have that weight lifted off your shoulders after you beat the pressure. It’s weird, because when they do something great, I have some kind of weird euphoria come over me and nothing can bother me after that. That’s why I have to watch.

I watch some other program on TV and have my computer next to me updating the play by play on cbs or espn.com. I know I can not control a game hundreds of miles away but when I was “watching” the game on my computer last night I turned the TV to the cubs game in the first inning with runners on 1st and 3rd no outs… we all know what happened after that.

it depends who’s batting. When the Cubs are up, I can watch and stay very positive. But when the opposing team is up, as soon as a runner gets on, I get very anxious and as soon as a second runner gets on, I have to turn it off/change the channel, otherwise I get ornery and frustrated very quickly.

This viewing strategy has saved me from alot of frustration, has helped my relationships with others, and generally improved my view of life and the Cubs.

and I usually read the site when the opposing team is batting. I’m always very careful to be watching when the Cubs are batting. I’ve only missed about ten games all year.

good or bad. I don’t want to just watch either…..I want the damn ball! I want to be in the middle of it. When it gets close, I get more interested….why did they call that pitch…..why are they playing there…..why did that manager do this when another would do that? All the little nuances make it all the more interesting to me. It brings me to the edge of my seat. It’s probably why I keep score when I go to a game….to get myself as close and as involved as I possibly can. Guess I’m nuts, I dunno.

I resort to going into the bathroom and brushing my teeth at critical junctions.

I’ve also been known to turn the sound down, read a book, do a crossword puzzle or in extreme cases, turn the TV or radio (usually radio) OFF for a few minutes to de-compress and let my blood pressure and heart rate return to some semblance of normality.

I’ve also been known to walk around the yard or do laps around the house on occasion.

So your behavior makes PERFECT sense to me. :)

but clearly others share in your “nut job behavior” (your words, not mine) and I think someday you all could very well indeed find yourselves in need of professional help. Of course, I also think you all are exaggerating just a little bit (ok, some of you a lot) in your coping mechanisms, but I’ll put aside my opinion for a moment and accept at face value you really are doing all these things.

Now if you’re happy feeling and doing these things, then ignore the rest of my post. But if your posting here is a plea for help, well I’m here to toss you an Old Style life preserver. And here it is.

Safe to say we all have waited our entire lives for the Cubs to win a championship. And it’s safe to say that the Cubs are in a pretty decent position to do just that this year. And as Al and others have pointed out many times, savor every moment of this season, remember where you were… yada yada yada…

To paraphrase that great Cub fan William Wallace…

"Aye, watch the Cubs in real time and you may die. Sit on your bathroom floor, and you’ll live… at least a while.

And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR CUBBIES!"

I’ll watch it, usually… but if its a tight game (Woody vs Pujols, winning run on base….) I’ll sit and talk to the dog with the volume low. Gingy knows i’m crazy and doesn’t judge me for it. :-P

I am extremely superstitious about what I do during the game. If I cross my legs a certain way, and something good happens, or the flow of the game changes for the better, I’m stuck in that position until the luck changes.

One thing I’m working through right now is that, if I wear anything Cub related while I am watching the game, the Cubs lose (indeed, any team I root for loses if I wear something of theirs while I watch it on TV – the year the Bulls went 72-10 in the regular season, I thought that I could wear a Bulls tee shirt for the Finals game against the Sonics when the Bulls were up 3-0 – the Bulls got killed in that game, and lost the next one as well). Oddly enough, if I see them in person wearing Cubs stuff, they usually win (my avatar is a picture of my wife and I at the first Cubs-Rockies game here in Denver this year, which the Cubs won).

I am a Notre Dame fan, and last week, Notre Dame sucked until my wife walked in from a nap. Exactly at that moment, they recovered a fumble, drove down the field, took the lead and took over the game. Poor thing, she’s earned herself a seat at my side for every ND game this year.

I think she’s scared to watch Cubs’ games with me, lest she get similarly stuck. If something good happens when she walks in, she’s doomed.

I’m glad to hear that I am not the only irrational person on this board.

I just dive underneath the bed during tense situations.

and proudly say…..

GO CUBS GO!!!!!