When your family has a history of heart trouble, it’s hard to watch any playoff game involving a Chicago sports team. Even when the Bulls were in their prime, their world championships were hard-fought affairs where you really couldn’t say that they won with any authority and it was always Michael Jordan, it seemed, that always had to save the team. (Except in the ’92 finals against Portland, where a guy named Bobby Hansen sparked the rally that won the Bulls the title.) Unscripted matches that come down to the wire, lift your spirits and dash your hopes, get the adrenaline flowing and maybe, just maybe, you’ll come out of your shell and let loose a tentative “woo”… only you can’t get your hopes up entirely and become irreversibly emotionally invested in it, lest the fairy-tale ending prove to be not in the cards and you suffer a massive heart attack and die.
On the other hand, it’s easy to watch scripted thrillers with edge-of-your-seat cliffhangers because you can reasonably expect it to come to a satisfying conclusion. Good versus evil–good always wins. (Except in stories that let evil win so there can be a sequel where the good guys are redeemed.)
However, (objectively, at least) there are no good teams and no evil teams in baseball. (Arguments can be made for the Yankees being the team no one wants to win, except Yankee fans I guess.) Games don’t abide by the morality that we’ve come to expect in our entertainment. The media are making out the Cubs as their darlings, ostensibly the good guys that everyone can get behind, even preempting Yankees games to show the Cubs-Braves matchup, so it’s hard not to think of the playoffs as just another battle of good and evil where the good guys will eventually win.
BUT: why do you have to tug at my heartstrings like that, Cubbies? Why do you tempt me with your astonishing victories that get fans believing, and then crush me with your gut-wrenching defeats where you come oh so close to rallying from behind only to dash our hopes in the wake of a high fly ball hit to deep center knocked down by that cold unforgiving Lake Michigan wind?
I wanted you to make it a brand-new ball game, Sammy, and show up that lousy John Smoltz and those lousy Atlanta Braves and most of all that lousy ex-Cub Greg Maddux. Most of all, I wanted there to be celebrating in Wrigleyville with a series clincher at home. You got my hopes up tonight, dear Cubbies. I had faith in the brick wall and ivy that had twice scared poor Chipper to let drop fly balls that would otherwise have been caught. I thought that if guys like Randall and Damien could hit the great John Smoltz, then surely Kenny was due, Mark could get on base, and Sammy would drive ‘em in, and there would be rejoicing in the streets of Chicago.
But nooooooooooo.