Red Sox's "Bambino" has got nothin' on Cubs' "Billy Goat"!

So the Boston Red Sox have won another World Series.   I guess I’m not allowed to be happy about that; I came here from Chicago and given the choice between adopting the Yankees or the Mets as my default home team, I wisely chose the Yankees…sorry Mets fans numbers don’t lie. 

I hope Mets fans will forgive me for going with the most expensive payroll in baseball but you must understand where I come from.  I grew up and remain in my heart a loyal Cubs fan.   My Babe Ruth was Ernie Banks.  My Derek Jeter was Ryne Sandberg.   Catching a game at Wrigley Field was an easy Clark street bus and bleacher ticket away during those oppressively hot Midwestern summers.  It was good to be a Cubs fan in every aspect but one: they have not won a World Series since 1908!  To put this in perspective, this was two years before the death of Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt (not Franklin) was president, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in Bolivia that year.

Red Sox fans for years made much of the “Curse of the Bambino” that they felt doomed the Boston team to never win a World Series after the trading of Babe Ruth to New York following their 1918 championship.   Spare me.  Even before this curse was put to rest in 2004 when the Red Sox finally won the series, I would shake my head with dismay.   Heck, when they traded Ruth it had already been eight years since the Cubs, a team that had won back-to-back championships in 1907-1908, had even captured the National League pennant.  To add a twist of the knife, it was the Cubs who fell to the Red Sox in that fabled 1918 series.  The “Curse Of The Bambino” is now long dead.  Buried three times over by the 2004, 2007 and now 2013 national champs.  

But “The Curse Of The Billy Goat” that seems to have effectively condemned my beloved Cubs to never winning the Commissioner’s Trophy is alive and well.   For those who do not know of what I speak, the last time the Cubs were in the World Series was 1945 (the final year of World War II for yet more perspective).  One of the most popular eateries in Chicago is the Billy Goat Tavern opened by Greek immigrant William “Billy” Sianis in 1934.  (It served as the inspiration for the famous SNL sketch “Cheeburger! Cheeburger! No Coke…Pepsi!”).  A long time Cubs fan, on October 6, 1945 Sianas bought two tickets to Wrigley for $7.20 each to see the World series against the Detroit Tigers: one ticket for him and one for a goat mascot named “Murphy”.  He was allowed to run around the field pre-game with the goat that wore a sign reading “We Got Detroit’s Goat”.   He then sat down with “Murphy” in the seat next to him to watch the game.  But during the fourth inning, security approached Sianas and informed him that, due to the animal’s unpleasant odor, he and his four-legged friend would have to leave.   While being escorted out Sianas was heard to say words to the effect of: “The Cubs ain’t gonna win no more World Series cause you insulted my goat!” 

They lost the 1945 World Series and, despite numerous ceremonial efforts since—even by Sianis himself—to lift the curse, it has now been 65 years since the Cubs have won the pennant and 105 years and counting since the Cubs have won a national championship.  

Oh they have come close.  But always it seemed that something would happen…a choke, a clutch play by the opposing team, or even a fluke.   The most notable residue of the curse occurred during the 8th inning of Game 6 of the Cubs’ 2003 playoff game against the Florida Marlins.  With the Cubs up 3-2 in the series and ahead 3-0 with one out they were just five outs away from winning the  pennant.  Then poor Steve Bartman interfered with a possibly playable (some say not) foul out to left field that was the beginning of an eight-run Marlins rampage losing them the game and eventually the series.  Bartman, a bona fide Cubs fan, had to be escorted from the stadium and required police protection!  (Ironically the real goat—pun intended—of that inning should have been shortstop Alex Gonzales who bobbled a possible double-play ground ball two at bats after Bartman’s moment of infamy that would have got the Cubs out of the inning up 3-1).   To rub salt to the wound, this game was played 95 years to the day the Cubs won their last World Series.  *Sigh*

And so the “Curse Of The Billy Goat” continues.  Two division titles since but no pennant and certainly no national championships.  Not yet anyway.  Not ever?  Only the spirit of the goat lords know for sure.  Perhaps it’s just bad luck.  The optimists say that any team can have a bad century.  Baseball expert and Cubs fan George Will counsels patience, offering that the Cubs are in the 105th year of their rebuilding effort.  Whatever the explanation, it baffles the mind that a city with such a great sports tradition as Chicago—with names like Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Red Grange, Gayle Sayers, Dick Butkus, Walter Payton, Mike Ditka, Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Stan Makita, Bobby Hull—should produce such a championship drought that is the longest in North American professional sports history.  It cannot be mere chance.  I fear that my beloved Cubbies are under the malevolent influence of dark forces that we simply do not understand.  Either way, Red Sox fans spare me the Bambino nonsense.  And to Yankees fans who lament they haven’t won the division for a year or a national championship since 2009 (oh the horror!) I ask that you keep your complaints to yourself.  You’ll get no sympathy from a Cubs fan.  Maybe some seething envy.  But that’s part of a Cubs fan’s cross to bear.  And it is no coincidence that of the seven deadly sins, envy, especially Sox or Yankees envy, is the only one without even momentary gratification.