The Pain is Gone

And really…would I rather be paying attention to basketball or gearing up for spring training? It’s almost an insult to ask it.
Time to start thinking of warm weather….

Rec’d

It hurt, and bad. But time has a way of putting that behind, and we look forward to another year of the sport and the team we all love.

I cried after we lost because for six months invested my heart, my soul, my time and a helluva lot of energy only to be let down. I cried because I want my family to see a WS because they sure deserve it the same goes for # 10. I’ll never give the Cubs up no matter how much they break my heart because I know when they do win it all it’s going to be the greatest celebration ever. I’ll tell you it will probably happen when we least expect it. Something like a 2003 minus all the drama at the end and the Cubs come out WS Champs. Can’t wait for this season. Born a Cubs fan, live a Cubs fan, die a Cubs fan, Go Cubs!

definitely taxing, but the anticipation of a new spring, season has a way of curing all. Nicely put…

this what baseball is to every team that does not win the WS every year.

Last year was the most crushing. 2003 was bad, but not as bad as last year. I really thought we would do it last year. But you are right, time to move on to a new season. Why can’t this be the year? I can’t find a reason.

to me, last postseason stll seems like yesterday…..time will tell how long into the season it’ll take to feel a lot longer…. just gotta be honest.

2003 was disappointing, however, easier to forget because of the Great hope it gave us for 2004….. same as 1984…. both only to be crushed with other disappointments

Last yr was so tough because the team was pretty much maxed out with regard to payroll/talent and had proved everything in the regular season, only to completely fold again in 3 straight, almost worse than the performance in 2007…which makes the optimism for this year very tough to buy…. sorry, I;m a lifer, but nothing’s really been done to make this look any more a winner (or loser) than last year…

wasn’t a true Cub fan. They were posers. Visitors, seat fillers. The people that countdown to opening day, check BCB every 30 minutes or so, and play manager and put together the perfect Cub lineup (Soriano hitting 6th) are the real Cub fans.

We bleed Cubbie blue, even if this doesn’t turn out to be “the year”.

Frankly, I didn’t want to really wear or see anything related to the Cubs for a good while. My emotional breakers finally snapped and I shorted out on anything related to them. I kind of posted off and on here through the winter, but I’m with Luis, this past meltdown was an epic fail that made even the polar opposites 2006 and 2007 almost pale in comparison.

I didn’t wear a single Cubs – related piece of sportwear for two months .. only in mid January have I started breaking out the stuff. None of my T’s have come out of storage, but I think I’ll probably have to do that in a week or so for wearing to the Y ..

Spring is a time of renewal for Cub fans, a balm that washes away the aches of their dying summer dreams that bled to death in the cold fall nights. Thank God for another day, another opportunity to enjoy the Cubs. And I am glad to be one of the most faithful and loyal fan base in all of sports. Before long, I’ll wear my jerseys and T’s and caps and going to see Double A ball an hour or so drive away and hopefully find money and time to see the Cubs soon enough somewhere ..

Yep .. mark me bleeding Cubbie blue .. give me that blue kool aid and read my LIPS .. or my signature ..

Which means that I can spend all my time thinking and talking about this year!

Go Cubs!

I purchased a few games worth of tickets at the HoHoKam ticket office the other day. I am ready for the season to begin and cannot wait to hear “Go Cubs Go” again!

That was the best Cubs team I’ve ever seen. They were absolute bone crushers, I still can’t believe they got bounced like that. Jimmy frickin Edmonds was a Chicago Cub!!!

 I swiftly put away all my Cubs shirts(vowing not to put them back in my closet)sulked around for two months, did’nt watch any other playoff games, I would’nt even talk about my disappointment. One day I decided to type in ol’BCB, there ya’ll were with the Peavy,Roberts, etc. talk.. The taste is going away from last year, I can smell the green grass, see the ivy turning, looking forward to seeing Gameboard, Fonzie, Ramy, and my man “D” put it all together this year. We can do it!! I want to thank Al, he is just another reason we are Cubs nation. I think I’ll go dig those shirts out.

going on about how these diehards were going to just dump the team and never follow them again or come back; yeah right.

If anyone could disassociate themselves from the Cubs that easy it’s simple; they’re not diehards. In fact I’d consider them not even fans. Casual fan? No such thing. Fan is short for fanatic. You can’t be a casual fanatic; contradictory words.

After 2003, there was this clown like friend of mine – unfortunately he’s even a colleague working for the same company but a different location than me here in the ChiTown area – who swore off the Cubs at the time. He was ‘converting’ to a fan of the team 9 miles south.

So I figure this past season I’d check him out on his fandom of his ‘new’ team. It’s a joke, a complete joke. He knows squat about that team and still knows quite a bit about the Cubs especially the goings-on the past 5 seasons.

So if you’re a fan, especially a diehard fan, you are that fan for life. Maybe even in the afterlife. That I’d like to believe because then when the Cubs do win the WS I can look to the heavens and tell my dad, grand dad and great grand dad our Cubbies finally did it.

The months of blowing snow and icy breezes are the perfect time to lick your wounds. After 3 months now of cold and snow, just the though of an empty green field in Arizona fills me with a warmth and excitement that could overcome any heartbreak from last year. In the cold of December and January, last season seems so far away. In the cold of February, the new season’s hope seems incredibly close.

I know I will feel different as the 09 season unfolds, but sitting here in Feb it hard to envision the 09 team being as endearing as the 08 team.

But there is one aspect to the playoff disaster that I still can’t shake, and that is reaction (a better put lack of reaction) of the fans at the game to what was happening on the field. The silence. The feeling the crowd had given up. It was like there was no hope left (of all things Cub fans are about eternal hope). I actually felt the LA crowd was far more supportive than the Wrigley crowd (sure they were up 2-0 so it was easier, but an LA crowd ? more supportive than a Wrigley crowd? — that was something I would never have predicted).

I cannot stand the national media protrayal of a curse, especially the billy goat thing which is just dumb. But, something was going on that night of Game 1. Was it us?

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

but at 42, I’ve never felt as unemotional about the start of the year. There was so much about last year’s team that was just right. Solid starting pitching, shutdown end of the bullpen, and the best term I heard was a “relentless” offense. It was the best Cub team I’ve seen in terms of wanting to step on the other team’s neck. Up by three in the sixth? Ok, lets score four more and leave no doubt.

I don’t know what this year’s team can do to inspire more confidence doing into the postseason that I had last year. I expect this year’s team to be very good, but I’m having a hard time getting excited about it.

…but the scar remains. I feel more grounded, more realistic this year. I’m just looking forward to seeing the season unfold – whatever happens, happens. There is no magic. There is, simply, good baseball and bad baseball (which some degree of luck does play a part in, but a small degree).

It’s obviously very hard not to expect the Cubs to do well, given the talent on their roster and the relatively stagnant state of the rest of the division. But I’m not going to get impressed until I have a reason to be. And should they make the postseason again, well, my guard will most definitely be up.

I am still crying over ’69. Maybe because of being young it has lingered with me to this day. Next worse was ’84. I mean we take a two game lead and come up empty.

In the ’03 season, same as ’84, take the lead and nothing. The past two post seasons have been hard, but to me, not as bad as the others listed.

I don’t need to quote the rest of it. You all know it, and Al uses it at the close of every season. But its so true. For some of us, last year was the most painful of them all. I wasn’t around for ’69 and all the other dissapointments were bad, but as someone else said last year you could just taste it. It was right there.

Afterwards, I never said I would no longer be a fan, but I really questioned the “investment” of time, energy, and emotion into this passion.

It took a few weeks, maybe even a month for the pain to subside, but eventually I started checking the regular sites for daily news and eventually found myself sucked right back into it 100%. Second only to my family, I love this game and I love this team. Can’t wait to see the newly remoldled ’09 Cubs take the field.

Lets play ball!

last season, there’s no use in dwelling on that debacle. That’s the beauty of baseball, hope springs eternal. Just like the coming spring, our hopes for a new season with new memories awaits. I’m not bitter, disappointed, but certainly not bitter. I love this game and this club too much to dwell on what might have been.

In the words of Eppie Laloosh “You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.” Let’s play ball!

because it was the closest I’d ever followed the team. First time I had cable since 2004, first time at a dayjob that allowed me to follow all the day games with you lovely lot. And the first time I truly lived and breathed Cubs baseball for half a year, and literally would plan my personal life around it.

Buddy: What are we doing today?
Me: I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m watching the Cubs game.

And while I didn’t swear off the team, things like coming to this very site in October and November hurt quite a bit.

But the past is the past, and Cubs baseball is all about looking forward. They say it’s always darkest before dawn. Well, friends, get ready for one hell of a sunrise.

Go Cubs Go

…where I tried to capture the changing emotional state of BCB by just listing the titles of all the other fanposts made after we were swept.

BCB Emotional Evolution – From Omega to Alpha
  by ballhawk on Oct 25, 2008 7:53 PM CDT

Didn’t take long. Within minutes of the last out of the Cubs 2008 season, the first fanpost came. And in the days that followed, a deluge of emotional outpouring came forth. Whenever I came into BCB, I always glanced to the fanpost list on the right side, just to see who was the latest to vent their spleen online. After awhile, I noticed the tenor had changed a bit – though acceptance had started to set in, rage was still in vogue. And of course, there was no shortage of thoughts on what to do for next year. I found it interesting every now and then to just scroll through the fanpost titles, oldest to newest, and essentially get a read on the emotional state of BCB.

Now that most of us appear to be on the road to recovery (though there are probably a few that haven’t even begun to pack), I thought I’d share this with everyone. Below I’ve consolidated all the fanpost titles in paragraph format, starting with the first one after Game 3 of the Dodgers series (Omega) and ending with the last one just before the first pitch of Game 1 of the World Series (Alpha). As much as possible, I tried to keep the titles as is – capitalization, grammar, misspellings and all. And just for reference and perspective, I included Al’s main page posts (in bold), but left out the game threads – not much emotion there. 202 titles in total (I think). Pull up a couch, a note pad, and a good cigar and let the pyscho-analyzing begin!

And just to whet your masochistic appetite… “Catharsis” was the first title and “So… I really tried.” was the last. Take a gander and see if you can find yours…

link to rest of fanpost

To me, being pissed in October and hopeful in April is what being a Cub fan is all about. Every year we hold out hope that this will be the year, and every year (at least in my lifetime) we are disappointed. The problem last year was that the media hype told us that we HAD to win because we had the best record, the best pitching, etc etc. Those of us who were Cubs fans before 2008 knew that basically we had the same roster as the year before (2007), and we all remember how well THAT one turned out. Actually, didn’t it end the exact same way? Thought so.

So this year I will be ponying up my $12 per month for the Direct TV sports pak so I can watch every Cubs game. I will be cheering for the Cubs every chance I get.

But I’m not holding my breath.

On one hand, it’s extremely unusual for the Cubs to have been either in the playoffs or contenders until nearly the end in six of the last ten seasons (1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008). That is a trend that few generations before us have witnessed. I frankly feel pretty positive about that, because it tells me that I’m not cheering for some sad-sack also-ran franchise that will always wilt before September, much less October.

On the other hand, if you look at the sequence of recent heartbreak, it gets a bit nastier. 2003 was the creme de la creme of disappointment, followed the next year by an even more disgusting meltdown. The next year, the hated Sox won it all, and the year after that, we were the worst team in the NL. The next two years were thrilling regular seasons, followed by complete duds of a postseason.

Unlike the economy, I don’t think it will get worse before it gets better. The way I see it, it can’t get much worse for us than it already has. Here’s to brighter days ahead…Go Cubs!

I look forward to the season ….and dread the playoffs.

That’s my philosophy after last year’s playoff debacle. Life is too short (season too long) to be watching the Cubs everyday on the MLB ticket.

at least the first month or so to remind us how far the Cubs and the fans following them have come.

Me, the old Mexican bard in me comes out ..

We can see clearly now, the pain is gone
We can see all of the obstacles in our way
Gonna let the dark clouds pass us by
Gonna be a bright, bright Cubs kind of Day ..
Look all around, there’s nothing but Blue sky
Look straight ahead, Bleed Cubbie Blue skyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyyyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy

Looking forward to the Cubs – White Sux dustup tonight .. play ball!