Beware of Devious Cub Fans: They Can Alter Their Voices

There is an outside chance the Chicago Cubs will get into the World Series this season, which means right now is a good time to start making plans for an October trip to China or a Polar region.

Because if the Cubs do make it to the Series, this particular continent will be overrun with smug, swaggering, crowing, official-equipment-wearing, original, die-hard Cub fans.

It’s a frightening thought--a bloodless takeover of the USA by these strange people. However, it would make a terrific TV miniseries.

“Americub.”

Come October, we’ll be assaulted with stories about how the Cubbies have the largest and loyalest and doggone swellest bunch of fans in the whole world. We’ll hear all about their darling ballpark and funky-hip town.

I got a taste of Cub Fever Monday night at Dodger Stadium, where the Cubbies were playing the Dodgeries.

There were thousands of Cub fans in the house. Do these people travel with the team, or what?

No, they live among us, quietly going about their business until the Cubs sneak into first place, like they did in ‘84, then these fans spring out of closets and make our lives miserable by being so, so . . . Cubbish.

It’s hard to describe. They’re not really destructive or dangerous, like Giant or Met fans. But they’re so caught up in their own mystique and so smug about their Cubbie loyalty.

I quickly fled to the press box. I thought I would check out the Cubs’ new gimmick, guest announcers. Regular play-by-play man Harry Caray is recovering from a stroke (he’s due to return to action next Tuesday), so the Cubs’ radio and TV people decided to bring in a different celebrity announcer each game.

They’ve had people like Brent Musburger, Duke Snider, Dick Enberg, Jay Johnstone, Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, Mike Royko and George Will.

It’s a wonderful idea, pumping life into baseball broadcasts that can become predictable and tedious. Too bad it’s an idea wasted on Cub fans.

As the idea caught on, the WGN radio-TV network was bombarded with pleas from VIP Cubbie fans in sports, show business and politics. Hundreds of requests had to be rejected, including several desperate pleas from people far too important to be embarrassed by being named here.

I don’t know about the President himself, but I’ve heard a rumor the vice president was turned down, because the Cubs were looking for names.

Rumors . . . Gary Hart wanted a shot, but his social calendar was full. The Cubs wanted Ollie North, but North wouldn’t work every inning, although he said he would take the fifth.

Tuesday night’s celebrity announcer was comedian Tom Dreesen, a Chicago guy now living in Los Angeles. Any preconceived notion I had about Dreesen’s reportorial objectivity fled when I met him. He was wearing a Cub uniform.

Actually, it was a replica of a 1908 Cub uniform, the last season the Cubs won a World Series.

I have never seen Vin Scully in a Dodger uniform while on the job. Nor have I ever seen Chick Hearn in a Laker uniform, nor Bill King in a Raider uniform.

Don’t ever again let me hear anyone criticize L.A. natives for the way they dress.

Dreesen is a funny guy, and chatty and amiable. But he is a Cub fan. Within seconds, he had whipped out his plastic “Die-Hard Cubs Fan Club” membership card. He was the club’s first president, the George Washington of Cubbieland.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t carrying my “Sick to Death of Cubs Fans Fan Club” card.

Notice how Cubbie fans always have to join pseudo-secret clubs and societies? I think they have special handshakes and decoder rings.

I eavesdropped on Dreesen’s broadcasting debut. I wasn’t expecting great things, of course. Becoming a proficient major league broadcaster, like developing into a big-time newspaper columnist, takes hours of training.

He blew a call or two. On a Steve Sax triple over the head of leaping center fielder Dave Martinez, Dreesen cried out: “Great catch!”

Tom rooted shamelessly.

“Let’s get three right here, Keith (Moreland)! Park one!”

“All right, Cubs, let’s get a double play!”

Of course, Harry Caray never won a Nobel Prize for objectivity, either.

After a shaky start, Dreesen did an OK job of keeping the game lively for the home folks, those 500 billion or so fans worldwide who tune into every broadcast and telecast.

But Dreesen never touched on the big issues, such as: Why is it, if the Cubs are so great and their fans so loyal, the fans move out of Chicago by the thousands, like people fleeing a burning building, and wind up in places like L.A.?

Dreesen, who was raised in Chicago and lives in L.A., has an excuse. He had to move to Los Angeles because he is a comedian, and people in Chicago don’t laugh. What’s funny about the daily Arctic gales, or crooked politicians, or the Chicago Bulls?

In the eighth inning, with the Dodgers trailing but still within striking distance, the Cubs’ TV camera people took a shot of the Dodger Stadium parking lot, alive with thousands of fleeing Dodger fans.

Dreesen and his TV sidekick Steve Stone commented on those strange L.A. fans who always leave the game early.

At the end of the eighth, I said goodby to Dreesen and Stone, explaining I had to get going, to beat the traffic.

I dashed to the parking lot, jumped in my car and turned on the radio, to the Dodger game. Vin Scully was calling the action. Suddenly I felt safe and secure, away from the Cubbie world outside.

I took out my “Go Cubbies” commemorative coin and flipped it. Heads, I’ll go to the North Pole; Tails, South Pole.