Now that I’m almost 7 years removed from Chicago, it’s time to address the clown organization that is the Chicago Cubs.  While the Cubs have had more than their fair share of horrific seasons, this past season was atrocious even by the lowered standards of Cubdom.  Maybe it’s because I was witness to the team with the best winning percentage when I was growing up in the 1980s (Tigers) and now have been witness to, from 1999 to 2005, the Braves unbelievable run of regular season baseball success, but I’m convinced the Cubs are an organization that is hampered by something more than incompetence.

I do have great memories living so close to Wrigley Field for 5+ years.  The ballpark’s a gem, the neighborhood that surrounds the place is like none other in sports, and it’s neat to see the looks on the eyes of people who are obviously there for the first time.  The place is a visual treat, an oasis from modern sports advertising excess.  The problem is that it’s also an oasis from postseason success.

Jinxes are an easy excuse to cover up incompetence or a string of bad luck, but I do think there is an additional element of extreme misfortune when it comes to this franchise.  After seeing the latest documentary on the Cubs ineptitude, an HBO documentary, it really stood out how ludicrous the scenario really is.  A perfect summary of the team’s woes can be shown in a timeline from the Bartman incident until now.  When it seemed that the Cubs were going to, at the very least, advance to the World Series and were 5 outs away from doing so, everything since then has been downhill.  They’ve gone from having the best 1-2 starting punch in baseball to having 2 people they couldn’t even trade for minor leaguers.  Wood and Prior’s injuries are comical in terms of how often they’re gone to the disabled list and the different ailments that have turned their arms and heads to mush.  You then get a manager who turns on the home crowd for booing underachieving players and also who basically quit on the team a year and a half ago, yet was allowed to keep his job.  Injuries to other team members have been nothing short of biblical in proportion.  You have pitchers who are so upset at a TV color commentator’s comments, which were spot-on critical of the team, wind up being the reason they fire one of the better baseball broadcast teams, rather than trying to figure out how to play better and actually earn their salary.  Can you blame any of this on a jinx? The answer is a resounding "Hell No".

How do they decide to rectify the situation?  The Tribune hires the Cubs marketing guru as the new president.  Sure, he can sell out a ballpark and knows which beanie babies sell well and what to put on a floppy hat, but putting him in this crucial position reminds me of the ill-fated attempt the Cubs once made to have a "manager by committee" fiasco that resulted in league wide scorn and was also an utter failure.

Are Cubs fans loyal or simply stupid for supporting a team with a worldwide reputation for failure?  I’m not really sure.  Fans (myself included at the time when I was there) feed the problem, selling out the ballpark despite continuous 90+ loss seasons.  I remember waiting for 5 ½ hours one cold February morning when tickets went on sale (this is pre-ticketmaster.com days) and this was following an utterly disappointing 97-loss season.  I think I bought tickets for 10+ games that day.  The best thing about the Cubs is also its downfall.  Wrigley is definitely part of the problem. In the 60s they didn’t draw anyone and it wasn’t the gem it is now because there were still a lot of “vintage” parks.  If that damn park weren’t so friggin’ beautiful, uncluttered with advertisements, intimate atmosphere, it would be a lot easier to not want to go to the ballpark.

While it’s easy to blame Wrigley I don’t buy into the day game excuse that a lot of former players have used as a reason why they can’t be competitive with other teams.  For what the average salary is in baseball, I have no sympathy for having to PLAY A GAME at 1:20 instead of 7:35.

With all this being said, the great memories I’ve had at that ballpark are memories I’ll never forget.  Having lived for a summer a half block away from the park, it was so cool to hear the crowd singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" while I’m cooking brats on the grill.  It was just as cool to hear, if the windows were open, the roar of the crowd a split second before you heard it on TV.

Now that Lou Pinella has been hired, he is simply another high-profile manager who has had success elsewhere but has no idea what the Cub “mystique” will do to completely ruin his reputation.  The new general manager said that he wanted a manager who “gets” Cub Lore.  I’ll close this entry with what Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote when asked him at his press conference about the curse of the Billy Goat.

So I ask him about the billy goat.

''Billy goat?'' he says quizzically. ''None at all. Why?''

Oh, every now and then a billy goat will pop into Cubbie conversation, I reply.

''Really? I had never heard of that. What's the conversation say?''

I feel badly, but I outline the story of the goat, how years ago the stupid animal wasn't let into Wrigley, and the curse was cast, and the Cubs haven't made it to a World Series since.

''How do I answer this one?'' Piniella says, looking to Cubs media chief Sharon Pannozzo for help.

''You don't,'' she replies.