This one goes out to 99% of the sporting-fan population that gets to experience the joys of a winning franchise. All of you people with “good” teams, like Yankees fans or BOSTON SPORTS FANS IN GENERAL (ew), yep, this is for you. An Introduction To The World Of Losing Sports, what it feels like to be us, and why we sometimes feel sorry for you.
On the one hand, being the fan of a perennially losing team is dark, twisted, and wholly cathartic. You find yourself crawling back for more even after being continually teased with the prospect of glory and then denied with terrific and terrible force. You’re tired of telling yourself to “believe” or that “next year is here,” but you do it anyways. You tell your Yankee-fan friends who scorn your loyalty that you don’t even care if they win another World Series because it’s not “special” anymore, like who would even want all those World Series? You don’t believe in curses, but secretly you do because you’re sorry that goat that didn’t get into the stadium in the 1900s when goats were cool and you hope that he’s listening. You secretly hate goats.
At the same time though, you fan the flames of eternal optimism. For you, the glass is half-full, the game isn’t half-over but has four and a half innings left. It’s been 103 years since the Cubs have won a World Series, but you will never hear a fan say they will be dead before their team wins again. They would actually just rather be dead. And let’s be honest, there really is always next year, logistically speaking, if the Mayans are wrong. Eternal optimism. Cubs fans are probably destined to save the world or something, after we save our team.
Yes, we are among sports’ most emotionally complex, but perhaps the biggest battle that we continue to struggle against is forging ahead in the wake of catastrophe. A losing season is one thing, and every team has them. But a winning season that goes up in flames—over and over and over again—that is our truest test of faith. Because coating the vast expanse of time between our victories is a series of defeats so ridiculous that it makes you question the integrity of the game. Seriously, how is it possible that the Cubs could make it all the way to the National League Championship, within inches of a World Series bid, and lose because of a rumble with an intervening fan? How is it possible that in 2008, a team with over 100 wins and the best record in baseball could be swept in the first round of the playoffs? One of the most absurd? How is it fathomable that in 1969, the Cubs were 9 ½ games ahead of the Mets on August 19th, only to wilt at the tail end of the season as the Mets blew past them winning 39 of their last 50 games and replacing them at the top spot?
And here is where the perennially losing fan differs from the fan of a team with a few bad years. For in our disgrace, we have found solace. We twist these mind-numbing defeats into fuel for our optimism. Because what has happened to the Cubs over the years is so utterly ridiculous, that we must believe anything is truly possible. It is because a team like the Mets came to overtake us in the embers of the season that we believe, no matter how dire our circumstances, no matter how late in the game or in the season, that we can break through the cloud layer and find our own fair weather. Our downfalls fuel our dreams, or demise is why we have hope.
People have all kinds of things to say to losing fans, among them the advice that if we boycott our team, and the high prices the franchise charges us to attend, we might send a message that it sucks to suck and we’re done. But a note to you all, from us: the day we boycott Wrigley is the day you boycott the Yankees because you just don’t feel like winning anymore. The only thing that truly threatens our loyalty to the Friendly Confines is the impending expiration of the Old Style contract.
So we continue to cheer, sometimes weary but never hopeless, as we reconcile our faith with the wounds our team continues to dole out. We continue to endure knowing that sipping from the victory cup will taste even better, even if we’re sipping from beyond the grave (but we won’t be). For anyone, the team to which you give your loyalty steals a tiny piece of your soul; the losing team to which you give your loyalty distorts your soul into something a little bit crazy, but a little bit awesome. And you let it, and you love it.
So, dark and twisted? Yes. Hopeful? Always. Next year? Obviously. Pessimistic? Sure, but we kindly refer to them as Sox Fans.
Elena Stratigakes is a guest writer for Rambles and Reviews and thinks that the Cubs will win the World Series in 2012.
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