Ten Years After Hell

With my travel to California over the weekend I didn't get a chance to really write anything during that time, but I knew a major anniversary to one of the most significant sporting events of my lifetime was coming up. And it pains me. Comcast Sports Net Chicago is showing a documentary on it tonight, and part of me wants to watch it. That part of me is a masochist.

I shouldn't need to explain the history of Cub futility over the decades, but every Cub fan since 1908 has had at least one defining "Cub" moment that has haunted them. For me, it came in 2003.

My parents moved to the Chicago area in 1984. My dad grew up a Twins fan and followed them closely, but considering the time, he wound up following the Cubs on their run to their first playoff berth in nearly 40 years. That, combined with the experience the bleachers provided for a low price (ah, the '80s...) sucked him in and he became a fan of the Cubs as well. It worked, since interleague play hadn't been invented yet and the only way the Cubs and Twins would face off was in the World Series, it worked (since, according to him, the odds of it happening were pretty much nil).

I started going to games in 1998 and got caught in the Sosa/McGwire race, which almost overshadowed the fact that the Cubs made the playoffs. Of course, they were promptly swept out of the postseason and the team fell back into relative obscurity.

Then 2003 came around. I remember reading my SI For Kids preview issue and saw the Cubs picked 3rd behind the Cardinals and Astros. I thought it was fair. But the team overachieved early on. I got to game in June against the Brewers which, to this day, is still the best baseball game I've ever been to. They got away with robbery from the Pirates, took 4 of 5 from the Cardinals in an early September series at Wrigley, and made it into the playoffs in a Saturday doubleheader at the Friendly Confines as the city celebrated. We were back.

A hotly contested series with Atlanta was fun to watch, but also somewhat agonizing, yet the Cubs pulled it out in 5, making it the first playoff series win in 95 years. When the wild card Marlins advanced on the other side, I thought we were golden. A World Series berth was palpable. We could feel it. Even a tough loss in Game 1 wasn't a setback. The Cubs won a blowout in Game 2, needed extras to win in Game 3, and pretty convincingly beat Florida in Game 4 to reach the doorstep.

Josh Beckett wanted to delay the Cubs' advance, and threw a gem in Game 5 to delay the end. Or so I'd thought. I remember riding to school with my mom, a friend and his sister, and we were pretty confident going into the day of Game 6 that the Cubs had only lost because the Cubs were destined to go to the World Series in front of 40,000 of their loyal, rabid fans, plus thousands more who had flocked to the neighborhood. And for most of the evening, it seemed like it was meant to be. Then the eighth inning started.

You all know what happened then. I think I watched from my family room, but I don't remember for sure. I just remember the agony of the Bartman incident, and I feel awful for the guy now, though I am glad he's mostly left alone. A lot of the Facebook statuses I've seen in the last day or so have been sympathetic towards a man who faced death threats for reasons I still don't understand. In that immediate moment, it was a close play along the wall, too tough to really overturn. But would any of us have done anything different than what he did that fateful night ten years ago? The man next to him nearly faced the brunt of the wrath until FOX's crew started looking closer. Poor Bartman has been villified ever since when he's not the person who should be blamed.

Realistically, fingers can be pointed at Dusty Baker for leaving Mark Prior in the game too long (and this has always been Baker's Achilles heel). We could blame Moises Alou for freaking out too much about that fly ball when he even admitted later he had no shot at it. A fellow Cubs fan on Twitter has taken to blaming Bernie Mac for reasons I don't fully understand. But for me, the culprit always has been and always will be Alex Gonzalez. Never mind the fact that he was a key part of the team throughout the season. That botched ground ball is what sticks out to me. If he gloves that, it's a double play and the Cubs go to the bottom of the 8th still up 3-0. Whether the 9th inning would have gone okay or not obviously, I'll never know. But I am convinced to this day that this is what doomed the Cubs.

The next morning was obviously sobering for Cubs fans. Even a Kerry Wood home run wasn't enough to stem the tide the Marlins gained from the night before. I went up to my room for the ninth inning, where I saw the dream come to an end.

As far as I can remember, losses in sports have only made me cry twice in my lifetime. The more recent one was my senior year of high school as a manager of Aurora Christian's basketball team. We won 20 games and captured the first regional title in a while for the school before falling in the sectional title game to a tough Byron team. That was the end of my official run with ACS basketball. The other time sports made me cry was after that Game 7. To this day it still hurts.

At the end of the day though, this isn't the end of the world. There are far more important things in this life and finishing high school and college and planning a wedding while entering the work force make you realize that. But the beauty of sports is that it can give us an escape from reality for a while. That can make the highs higher. But it can also make the lows lower. The pain from being that close to seeing history is still there. But life goes on. Maybe that, along with prompt exits in 2007 and 2008 have tempered my expectations as a Cub fan. But the events that transpired ten years ago sadly live on in the lore of a franchise filled with sadness and disappointment. And it's a lore that will stick with Cubs fans for a long time. But hopefully not too long. I still hope that one October, the north side of Chicago will be rocking, Steve Goodman will play on, and a city waiting 105 years for magic to happen will finally get to experience the party it has long desired.