Is it Next Year Yet?

Mark hates sports. I love sports. When I take Mark to a baseball game he spends three innings eating and drinking then he goes out to the souvenir stands to shop. I love to watch sports. Football, baseball and basketball, I’ll even sit and watch Australian rules football. Even as a kid I remember watching sports. The fact is I was horrible at sports when I was a kid, maybe that’s why I like watching and not doing.

One of my earliest memories playing sports was my brother Dave trying to teach me how to catch a baseball. He started out lobbing it gently to me at first, which was fine, but then he decided I was ready and he heaved the ball high up into the air. "Get under it" he yelled, and like a Three Stooges skit I did. It hit me square in the forehead. While I screamed bloody murder, a bump on my head swelled up the size of a large walnut. Lesson one, I can’t catch.

When I was about nine or ten years old my dad decided I should join the Little League. At the first try out it was quite apparent that I was awful and the coach suggested to my dad that I go to the instructional league. This seemed to hurt my dad more than it did me, I thought it was a fine idea. In the instructional league they put me in the outfield, where I caught about one out of a hundred fly balls. The worst part was batting, in the entire time I was in that league I never, ever hit a ball. When it was my turn to bat the other kids always said "Here comes strike out!". Lesson two, I can’t hit.

So tonight I sat and watched another Cubs game on TV. They are in the thick of a pennant race, going touch and go with the Milwaukee Brewers. Tonight they won and the Brewers lost putting them in first place one game ahead of the Brewers. Even if the Cubs win the pennant, I have grave misgivings about the final outcome. This is because I watched them blow it in 1984, and again in 2003. I know people in Chicago are getting all exited about the Cubs maybe going to the World Series, but those must be people who didn’t learn lesson three.
Lesson three, The Cubs will rip your heart out and stomp on it as they find a way to lose what may seem to be a sure win.