Moving on as a Cubs Fan
The last time I laid eyes on my beloved boys in blue, I had a bittersweet taste in my mouth. It was late last September, just a month and a half removed from the trade deadline. My fellow Cubs fans and I were still grieving the loss of franchise cornerstones Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, and Kris Bryant.
I say grieving because, although dramatic, that’s exactly what it was here in Chicago. When a franchise hasn’t won in a hundred years, fans naturally get attached to the men who finally raise them out of abject poverty and into the sphere of consistent contention. Particularly here in Chicago, where Cubs fandom seemed to never waver through multiple generations of losing. The second Anthony Rizzo put the last-out ball in his back-pocket in 2016, Cubs fans pocketed 100 years of bad luck and history and finally looked toward a brighter future.
Looking back 6 years later, with the clear vision that hindsight often brings, that Cubs team was unsustainable and over- hyped. All of America, not just Chicago, was riding the high of a beloved, lovable team winning the World Series. Can you blame them? The story was too good not to cover and too many people were affected. 5 million, in fact, flooded downtown in a sea of mostly blue with red and white., Drinking, laughing, and celebrating a championship, culminating into one of the largest gatherings in American history.
On that day, the hallways and classrooms of my high school were barren. The student parking lot was a wasteland of receipts, chewed gum and yellow parking spaces. Out of 2000 total students, 200 showed up. Teachers were forced to effectively cancel each class because it apparently didn’t make sense for them to teach the curriculum when “they’d just have to teach it over again once everyone came back.” I wasn’t complaining. All we did was play games and watch movies.
But walking the deserted, sterile, hallways between classes made it incredibly clear where I wanted to be and what I was missing. Chicago. Just 40 minutes away from my small suburb. The mumbling and disgruntled attitudes amongst my male teachers hinted at them wanting to be there too. If one would have walked through that deserted school on that crisp fall day, they would’ve learned two things
One: Something big has happened Two: These people are missing out on it.
In conclusion, the 2016 Cubs were a big deal.
Fast forward 6 years later and it seems like we’ve finally, almost completely, moved on. There’s still some holdovers from the championship team, Kyle Hendricks and Willson Contreras most notably, but let’s be real, those guys aren’t the ones that finally brought a World Series to Chicago. Contreras was a rookie playing just 76 games in 2016 (playoff hero Miguel Montero was the everyday catcher), while Kyle Hendricks was a solid number three starter behind horses Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta. No. The literal and figurative power of that 2016 team came from Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant. The guys that put both the ball and the fans in the stands.
And as the 2022 season starts there’s certainly less of them. Ticket prices are being slashed while ticket promotion and advertisement seems to be going up. KB, Javy, and Rizz were traded for some players we see on the field and some we don’t. The players we don’t are all young, toolsy kids with sky-high potential. Players that, with the crap-ton of instruction and development we know this team provides, can possibly be even better than KB, Javy, or Rizz. If the casual fan knew that the goal is to get players better than the three that shook Chicago 6 years ago, there would be a lot less animosity. So there it is. That’s the goal. It’s time to trust the front office. It’s time to trust the people who know baseball better than us.
Because if Jed’s plan works, yet another sea of blue will flood downtown Chicago. Fans will once again pack the stadium and the Cubs will once again be the envy of the baseball world.
Only this time it won’t take 108 years.
And this time I won’t miss out!
Here’s to a great season!
Please follow The Press Box on Twitter.
