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A Pessimist sees the glass as half empty; A Cub Fan wonders when it's gonna spill.
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Mike Royko
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New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi.
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Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
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A Pessimist sees the glass as half empty; A Cub Fan wonders when it's gonna spill.”
― Mike Royko
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Mike Royko
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to be a Cubs fan is both a birthright and a curse.
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Jason Diamond (Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from '80s Movies)
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Cubs fan,” John muttered. The Chicagoan’s curse. Sandoz pushed a towel aside, eyes wide. “How bad?” “Anybody can have a couple of lousy centuries.
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Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
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Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides.
Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?"
It was a gift from Sam," Hank explained as they entered the tent. "He said it used to represent Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes."
I think I preferred not knowing that," said Hugo.
Hank grinned. "You're a Sox fan too, hey?
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James A. Owen (The Indigo King (The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, #3))
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Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams—and at the root of every curse there’s a story. Boston’s curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland’s curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball’s elite—and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything.
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Tucker Elliot
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You know why I’m raising you kids to be Cubs fans?” Buddy shakes his head. “Any mook can be a fan of a winning team,” Dad says. “It takes character to root for the doomed. You show up, you watch your boys take their swings, and you watch ’em go down in flames—every damn day. You think Jack Brickhouse is an optimist? No-siree. He may sound happy, but he’s dying inside. There’s no seat in Wrigley Field for a God damn Pollyanna. You root-root-root for the home team, and they lose anyway. It teaches you how the world works, kid. Sure, start every spring with your hopes and dreams, but in the universe in which we live, you will be mathematically eliminated by Labor Day. Count on it.
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Daryl Gregory (Spoonbenders)
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some people might argue that a fan who roots for a losing franchise isn't a very smart fan, but you have to be pretty crafty in the head to continually enjoy cubs baseball. who do you think is smarter? the Yankees fan who can't be happy just getting to the World Series? or the Cubs fan, who can somehow manage to have the best summer of his life watching his team finish 17 games out of first place
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the heckler
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When the former Negro Leagues star Buck O’Neil, now serving as a Cubs scout, said, “Mr. Holland, we’d have a better ball club if we played the blacks,” Holland didn’t disagree. But the fans were already accusing him of making the Cubs look like a Negro League team, he said. So Holland traded Jenkins to the Texas Rangers. A year later, Jenkins led the American League with 25 victories. He would win 110 more on his way to the Hall of Fame.
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Kevin Cook (Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink)
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Boston and Chicago are two great seats of mathematical research located in major American cities. Until they won in 2004, if you asked a baseball fan in Boston what they most hoped to see in their lifetime, they would have answered a World Series win for the Boston Red Sox. Chicago Cubs fans are still waiting. Ask a mathematician in either of those cities or anywhere else in the world what they would most hope to see in their lifetime, and they would most likely answer: "A proof o the Riemann hypothesis!" Perhaps mathematicians, like Red Sox fans, will have their prayers answered in our lifetimes, or at least before the Cubs win the World Series.
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Stephen Hawking (God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History)
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If we can’t go in,” Sianis announced, “the Cubs will never win.” Wrigley’s private security guards blocked the way, and the Curse of the Billy Goat was born. The Cubs lost Game Four and went on to lose the Series. They had been in seven World Series since 1908 and lost them all. They wouldn’t reach another World Series for more than seventy years. But as George Will would note, “Cub fans like to say that any team can have a bad century.
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Kevin Cook (Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink)
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But one thing led to another, as things have a way of doing, and in 1948, when I was still not as discerning as one should be when making life-shaping decisions, I became a Cub fan. The Catholic Church thinks seven-year-olds have reached an age of reasoning. The church might want to rethink that.
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George F. Will (A Nice Little Place on the North Side: A History of Triumph, Mostly Defeat, and Incurable Hope at Wrigley Field)
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Cubs fans can expect a new feel to the ballpark, one that will be more modern, informative and entertaining — but also one that has left some fans fearful Wrigley will lose its charm.
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Anonymous
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I’d rather take my chances out there, in the unknown, than to die a miserable death at the hands of Cubs fans. Do you understand me, Ben? I will not die in Cubs territory.
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Clayton Smith (Apocalypticon)
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The subject of baseball came up—I was an ardent Cubs fan, despite their terrible record that year—and I said, “Even if the White Sox are having a better season, Ernie Banks is clearly the best player on either team. If the Cubs build around him, they’ll be good in time.” Maureen’s father smiled unpleasantly from across the table. He said, “You’re awfully opinionated for a girl.” It was not the first time someone had said such a thing. Starting when I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Jauss, had routinely asked me to be in charge when she left the room, a task that sometimes necessitated my telling John Rasch to sit down or stop poking Donna Zinser and resulted in John reminding me that I wasn’t a teacher. In fourth grade, I’d been elected co-captain of the safety patrol, which occasionally elicited similar resistance from my peers. But Mr. Gurski’s remark was the sentiment’s clearest and most succinct expression in my life thus far and gave me, henceforth, a kind of shorthand understanding of the irritation and resentment I provoked in others. Not all others, of course—plenty of people admired that I was eager and responsible—but among those provoked were both men and women, adults and children.
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Curtis Sittenfeld (Rodham)
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I owned a Buick Wildcat during the summer of ’69. As I drove around Chicago, fans would wave and flash me a peace sign. I think it would be impossible to try to recreate that feeling we had in Chicago in ’69.
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Billy Williams (Billy Williams: My Sweet-Swinging Lifetime With the Cubs)
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Cubs leadoff man Ivan DeJesus had a slashy swing and a fan club that called itself Jews for DeJesus.
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Kevin Cook (Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink)
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When the rain delay ended, the Cubs came out looking fresh and hungry. Schwarber raced out to the plate and lashed a single to start things off. The Cubs scored two runs. Cleveland tried to fight back one more time, but this time the comeback fell short. Mike Montgomery was on the mound for Chicago. Michael Martínez was the batter. He chopped a ground ball to third base. “Tough play,” Joe Buck said on television, but third baseman Kris Bryant had no doubts, and he grabbed the ball and threw it across the infield. As he threw, he smiled. That’s the part every Cubs fan remembers. The smile. Martínez was out, the Cubs were champions, and 108 years of sadness, heartbreak, and absurdity came down crashing. And I’ve always wondered: What the heck did Jason Heyward say?
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Joe Posnanski (Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments)
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Bill was the Cubs fan the whole nation looked to in the moment of victory: he was shocked and overjoyed and relieved of the weight he had been carrying around for decades. “I’ve been imagining this for a long time,” Bill said. With the
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Gavin Edwards (The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing)
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Lucas looked down the street toward the Metrodome. "I don't want to do anything today. I just want to sit somewhere and see if I can feel good. There's a Twins game...."
"Sarah's never been."
"You wanna see a game, kid? They ain't the Cubs, but what the hell." Lucas lifted Sarah to straddle the back of his neck and she grabbed his ear and him with the pacifier. What felt like a gob of saliva hit him in the part of his hair. "I'll teach you how to boo. Maybe we can get you a bag to put on your head.
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John Sandford (Eyes of Prey (Lucas Davenport, #3))
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I grew up in Central Illinois, midway between Chicago and St. Louis and I made a historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinal fans and grew up happy and liberal, and I became a Cub fan and grew up embittered and conservative.
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George F. Will (How Baseball Explains America (How...Explain))