This is one of the most delicious weeks of the year, usually. The flowers are blooming, the redbuds are budding and Redbirds are chirping their way north for Opening Day on Sunday night.
Ordinarily, I leave the sandbox activities to the sports guys at the paper. I used to write sports, too, back when they used wooden bats, so I have a lot of respect for their ability to stay focused on a spring baseball game that features 14 walks, yet somehow not freeze to death.
This parka’s for you, guys.
In this region, where youth and high school baseball thrives, it’s a natural that if there is a universal topic at the barbershop, a church parking lot, grocery store or post office lobby, it’s the St. Louis Cardinals.
The start of baseball and end of winter are double, simultaneous celebrations.
So all is bright and sunny, right?
Sort of.
There is a cloud that hangs, not enough to obscure the joy of the season, but a cloud just the same. It comes from the north with a bleating, irritating, grinding sound, like a radiator that’s about to blow.
It is the sound of idolatry and false idols, of revenge and a century-old thirst finally quenched, like the blind pig who not only found some acorns, but a cool, bubbling spring to help wash them down.
It’s the damned Cubs and all their worshippers.
For more than a century, since 1908, they really were damned – condemned to comically bad play, epic instances of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, bizarre failures blamed on billy goats and curses and fan interference. If there was a way to lose, they found it. Along the way, they invented new ones.
During those years, amusing and gratifying as they were, it was easy to admire the resilience, loyalty and suspension of reality that even casual Cubs fans were capable of. Like a losing gambler at the racetrack, they just kept coming back for more and more and more. Next year, they said. Or maybe, next generation.
It was their place in the universe and they seemed OK with it.
The cloud began to form last year with the hiring of the new genius, Joe Maddon, as Cubs manager. The club had tanked for so many years that it got top choices in the amateur player draft and some of those seeds were about to sprout. Plus, they went out and signed free agents, including two former Cardinals.
The adoring national media went right along – they’d probably go 162 and 0.
Well, somehow they lost 59 games. Most importantly, though, they didn’t lose the last one. The earth moved.
Richter scales across the country had to be recalibrated. Sportswriters had to invent new superlatives. There was an off-season orgy of accolades and outright prostration to the new kings, They Who May Never Lose Again.
It continues this spring. I got my Sports Illustrated last week, the baseball preview issue, and it had a six-page feature on Kris Bryant, the wunderkind Cubbie third sacker. I learned he’s 25 years old, 6-foot-5, has a chiseled jaw and the steely blue eyes of a fashion model. He just married his high school sweetheart. Of course he did.
He doesn’t curse or smoke and has never tasted alcohol. He said he’d try a drink if his team won it all, but he backed off because that wasn’t Who He Is.
He’s Paul Bunyan and the Rev. Billy Graham and Fabio all wrapped into one.
And here’s the best part: He’s discovered “the modern swing of today.” Get ready for it – he hits a lot of fly balls. And they go really far.
This year, even though the Cardinals stole their centerfielder, the Cubs really might go 162-0. Counting the playoffs and World Series, it could be 173-0. And probably most of their team will be in the All-Star game and win that, too, so let’s call it 174-0.
Meanwhile, everyone else is playing for second place, which, if they succeed, only means their eventual turn in the meat grinder come playoff time.
The Cardinals, who open at home Sunday night against the Cubs, have the potential to go 143-19 because they play the Cubs 19 times.
Now, it’s not a positive approach to concede 19 games to your fiercest rival, but look at what the national media are saying. Those guys are never wrong. Just look at last year’s presidential election – they nailed it, didn’t they?
Here’s my subversive wish. Maybe, just maybe, the Cardinals can steal a game from the Cubs, maybe in the first series of the year. Maybe even on Opening Day.
That would introduce doubt. Sure, 161-1 would still be pretty good, but it wouldn’t be perfect. Some of those old Cubbie demons could creep back in. Maybe the prognosticators are wrong. Maybe it’s not a lock. Maybe someone else could win.
That thought, secretly, is already in the Cub psyche.
Lord knows they lived with it long enough: “This could be our year.” “We looked really good in spring training.” “On Opening Day, we’re all tied for first.”
And then, finally, “Wait until next year.”
Well, next year is here. Let’s see how tight that collar gets.
