When Your Baseball Team Gets Its Doors Blown Off But You Aren't Cursed Anymore
I was in my third year of following Major League Baseball in 2003. The Chicago Cubs having a then-95-year championship drought was something that I was aware of, but I didn't really get it. I broadly knew that the Cubs were lovable losers and that all my St. Louis Cardinals fan family members made fun of the Cubs, and me, because of it.
2003 was the first year of my fandom where the Cubs were any good, and it was the first year I followed that they made the playoffs. They went a pedestrian 88-74, but won the Central Division. Despite their modest record, they were contenders because they had a two-headed dragon --Mark Prior and Kerry Wood-- atop their pitching rotation that they could use every couple of games. Case and point, they took out the Atlanta Braves in the National League Division Series three-games-to-two, winning Games 1, 3, and 5 --the games Wood and Prior pitched:
Kerry Wood:
Game 1: 7.1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 5 BB, 11 K.
Game 5: 8 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 7 K
Mark Prior:
Game 3: 9 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 7 K
The Cubs would eventually lead the NL Championship Series three-games-to-one over the Florida Marlins. This is one series before the World Series for those who might not be up on baseball playoff architecture.
Heading back to Wrigley Field up three-games-to-two, the Cubs had Prior pitching Game 6 and, if necessary, Wood pitching Game 7. Even for a fan base expecting cursed catastrophe, this was basically the best case scenario.
And Prior delivered. Through 7 innings, he had given up no runs on three hits, while striking out seven. Up 3-0 with one out in the eighth inning, an innocuous fly ball sailed down the left field line towards the crowd. It landed almost exactly between the glove of left fielder Moises Alou and the hands of Cubs fan, Steve Bartman. The result was a non-catch, a livid Alou stomping around, and a terrified fan sitting completely dumbstruck while the boos (and beer, and food, and objects) rained down on him.
That this story is still around should already tell you what transpired next.
Cursed catastrophe. Hits, walks, wild pitches, a bobbled double play ball. When the dust settled, it was 8-3 and onto Game 7. Steve Bartman was escorted into the bowels of Wrigley Field for his protection. Now disguised, security waited for everyone to leave before escorting Bartman out of the stadium. Eventually, Steve Bartman literally had to move out of Chicago.
"We'll get'em tomorrow!" an optimistic Cubs fan said afterwards. But everyone else already knew: Not a chance in Hell.
The Cubs would lose Game 7 by a score of 9-6.
Not understanding the full context of Cubs futility saved me. I remember being disappointed, but the ones who did understand were absolutely heartbroken. As Eddie Vedder would later sing, "don't let anyone say that it's just a game." Steve Bartman was the next chapter in a Cubs cursed lore book that would eventually balloon to 108 years without a championship.
The Cubs were actually quite dominant in the early parts of the 20th century. They lost in the World Series in 1906, won in 1907 and 1908, and then lost in 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, and 1945.
But it was in 1945 when the story of Cubs losing truly began. William Sianis, owner of the nearby Billy Goat Tavern, brought his pet goat, Murphy, ticket and all, to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series at Wrigley Field. When he was made to leave, he allegedly said "Them Cubs ain't gonna win no more." They would go on to lose Game 4, as well as the series four-games-to-three to the Detroit Tigers. The Cubs wouldn't see another World Series appearance until 2016.
If that was it, William Sianis and his goat would be a curiosity nugget of baseball fandom. But it wasn't. The journey from 1945 to 2016 was perilous to a degree that felt, well, cursed.
In 1969, the Cubs led the NL East by 9.5 games in August. They led it by 1.5 games on September 9th when a black cat ran onto the field, circled Cubs third baseman Ron Santo in the on-deck circle, and stared into the Cubs dugout. They would lose the game 7-1, shrinking their lead to 0.5 games. After the black cat, Ron Santo's season OPS was 140 points lower than it had been, the Cubs went 8-17, lost the division, and didn't make the playoffs.
In 1984, the Cubs won the first two games in the best-of-five against the Padres. In the deciding Game 5, Cubs first baseman, Leon Durham, had a ground ball go under his glove in the 7th inning. The Padres would score four runs and knock the Cubs out of the playoffs.
Even more bizarre was that halfway through the 1986 season, the Cubs traded Bill Buckner to the Boston Red Sox. In Game 6 of the World Series, as surely even non baseball fans know, Buckner missed a slow rolling ground ball along the first base line. The Mets won the game and eventually the World Series, thus prolonging the Red Sox' own Curse of the Bambino --the curse that allegedly impacted the Red Sox for having traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
But that's the historical part. The rest is more unsettling. Because of the mid-season trade, Buckner still had some Cubs equipment. When he botched the famous play at first, you can see in the picture that he has a Cubs batting glove on underneath his fielding glove. You don't have to believe in black cats and curses, but c'mon.
In 2003, the Bartman incident happened. But so did Dusty Baker overusing his top pitching arms, Alex Gonzalez bobbling a routine double play ball, and Bernie Mac singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch when he changed the normal "root, root, root for the Cubbies" to "root, root, root for the chaaa-ammmps." Bro, what are you doing?
2007 and 2008 saw the Cubs win back-to-back division titles. The result was them being swept both times in the first round of the playoffs.
The Cubs would have a remarkable season in 2015, going 97-65. The future looked bright (they would win the World Series the next year), but the Cubs would be swept in four games by the New York Mets in the NL Championship Series. But there was one player who almost singled-handedly made this happen.
Across the four games, he hit .529/.556/1.294 with an OPS of 1.850. He hit 4 HR, had 6 RBI, and scored 6 runs. If you don't watch baseball, all you have to know is that these numbers are so far beyond the realm of ridiculous. Complete and utter dominance. The player's name?
Daniel Murphy -- the same name as the stupid goat from 1945.
Finally, on the 46th anniversary of William Sianis' death (one more than '45, the year of the curse), the Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League pennant for the first time in 71 years, and went on to win the World Series for the first time in 108 years.
There are, of course, rational reasons as to why the Cubs lost those games over the years. What's astonishing is that those aren't cherry picked years for the sake of argument; they are, between 1945-2015, the only years the Cubs were good (save for 1989 and 1998 which also saw quick playoff exits). It isn't that anyone ought to actually believe in curses, but you have to admit it's pretty wild to have 8 playoff seasons out of 70 and have goats, black cats, and all manner of misfortune occur in those few and far between opportunities. The 2016 team may have broken the World Series curse, but I have to say, I don't love that the Milwaukee Brewers' manager is currently named Murphy --a tenure that has seen the Brewers stomp the Cubs on a yearly basis. And that he became the manager only because the Cubs poached Craig Counsel from the Brewers is low-key terrifying.
The Cubs were annihilated by the San Diego Padres in the playoffs about two weeks ago. A hopeful, even if suspicious, playoff run somehow evaporated before it even had a chance to rain. I'm always disappointed when Cubs seasons end, and am perhaps more disappointed than usual given the uncertainty of baseball in 2027 due to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement between the Player's Union and the MLB owners. God forbid people learn how to share billions of dollars.
But to lose without the weight of 108 years is still kind of....nice? I felt it when the Brewers knocked out the Cubs last year, and I feel it again this year.
But baseball is better with the mystical. It needs Babe Ruth supposedly calling his home run at Wrigley in the 1932 World Series. It needs Dee Gordon --a player who only had 18 home runs in 11 seasons -- hitting a lead-off home run the day after his best friend and pitcher, Jose Fernandez, was killed in a boating accident. It needs Sammy Sosa sprinting with an American flag out to right field in the Cubs first game after 9/11. It needs president George W. Bush throwing a perfect ceremonial first pitch strike at Yankee Stadium during the World Series after 9/11. It needs goats and black cats ruining seasons. It needs Rally Monkeys saving them. It needs Greg Maddux supposedly throwing an intentional bad pitch to Jeff Bagwell so Maddux could get him out with the same pitch come playoff time later that season. Baseball needs all of it. I hope the Cubs aren't cursed again, but if they are, at least it'll be one hell of a story.