Didn't feel the need to buy this |
Because
while the final round of the National League playoffs begins Saturday and has
the potential to be a Chicago/New York battle (although a classic Chi/N.Y. brawl would be against the Yankees), it will be mid-week of
next week when the games come to the Lake View neighborhood.
IT
OUGHT TO be a time when the part of Chicago that takes the Cubs seriously ought
to be feeling glee. Their preferred ball club has played much better than
anyone had a right to expect; and they are on the verge of making “1945” just
another league championship year.
Then
again, they could claim the same in 1984 and 2003 – and in both of those years
came within one ballgame of winning the National League championship before
blowing things.
Perhaps
it is that anxiety that things could go down the drain yet again that is
getting some people all worked up to complain that their ball club isn’t being
given enough “love.”
What
makes me apathetic about the whole National League playoff scene (aside from
the fact that I’m more of an American League fan) is the idea spread by many
that the Cubs are entitled to the love of the nation – and that anybody who
dares not to worship Cubbie blue is somehow flawed.
Will the Cubs really win in '15? |
JUST
AS WHEN President Barack Obama used Twitter to offer his own support for the
Cubs – even though he’s South Side oriented and a White Sox fan. There were
those who wanted to immediately trash Obama for even getting involved.
There
are those who did so for politically partisan reasons. Although that bothers me
because I always view baseball as a way of escaping the nonsense of political
griping. Those people seriously need to get a grip.
There
also are the people who are upset these days because Cubs organization hitting
instructor Manny Ramirez (who has worked with the minor league affiliate in Des
Moines, Iowa) said he thinks one-time Cubs demi-god Sammy Sosa ought to be
allowed to throw out a “first pitch” prior to one of next week’s games.
He falsified his license renewal, remember? |
For
all the love and affection that Cubs fans thought their team was entitled to
because of all those Sosa home runs more than a decade ago, it cracks me up the
degree to which they dump on him now.
A Cubs' World Series ring? Only in Hollywood |
AS
THOUGH THEY think they can rewrite history and pretend he’s not really a
significant part of the Cubs image. Ramirez is probably correct in saying that
Sosa is entitled to be a part of the festivities that occur this week.
But
to read the anonymous crackpots who pollute the Internet with their whining
responses to everything, it’s no, no, no, no and no!
Now
I don’t know who will wind up doing the “first pitch” duties at the ball games
to be played at Wrigley (where the Illinois Nazis showed up in their fruitless
pursuit of the guy who drove through their rally and forced them into the
river).
A Cubs hero, even if you won't admit it |
IT
SEEMS THAT actor Christopher Lloyd (who played “Doc Brown” in all the Back to
the Future films) is hearing talk that he will be asked to do the “first pitch”
duties, and he’s all excited to handle the task.
Just
as there are some who also are eager to bring up “Rookie of the Year, another
film that ends with a Chicago Cubs World Series victory. Will we get people
eager to see a 12-year-old whose childish antics supposedly lead the adult Cubs
to victory on the playing field?
Fiction
seems to be overtaking reality, which makes me wonder if the Cubs manage to
lose if their fans will merely create their alternate reality and pretend they
really won?
Although
thinking back to those Illinois Nazis (whom we all hate) makes me think of the
video I stumbled across on YouTube – one in which Adolf Hitler was talking with
his leading strategists about baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals and becomes
outraged upon learning of the Cubs’ victory earlier this week in the playoffs.
PERSONALLY,
I FIND it ironic because of a bit of propaganda that came from the real Nazis –
an English-language report intended to demoralize Allied prisoners of war about
how Yankee imperialists beat up on helpless, defenseless birds.
The
reality behind that report? The New York Yankees defeated the St. Louis
Cardinals in the 1943 World Series!
So
the idea of a Hitler outburst in reaction to a Cubs victory? Perhaps it’s
fitting in light of all the other nonsense we’re going to deal with next week.
-30-
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