Fatal Attraction: Root, Root, Root for Cubbies

As the cute little Cubbies tentatively poked their noses above .500 at least briefly last week, there was a surge of optimism among America’s longest suffering faithful.

Never mind that there were three teams in front of them and that the games- behind column still read double digits. Never mind that the surge was fueled by a four-game sweep from Colorado, a team that never existed before this season.

Details, details. Cubs fans have learned to accentuate the positive, whenever they can find any. And .500 for this franchise is distinctly positive, considering that the club has finished above that break-even point just twice in the last 20 years.

For Cubs fans, it is always next year, a rebulding project in perpetuity. When Boston fans start wringing their hands about the futility of rooting for the Red Sox, they are dismissed derisively by the entire north side of Chicago. Boston was in the World Series in 1986. The last time the Cubs played in the World Series was 41 years before that. The last time they won a Series was 1908.

Now that’s futility.

It was strictly coincidental that the Cubs’ surge to mediocity occurred in the same week that the Nielsen ratings reported NBC-TV’s “Today” show in first place among the morning network news shows for the first time in 35 weeks.

There are, you see, a cluster of Cubs fans lurking at “Today,” waiting for prosperity at Wrigley Field. When it happens--and they know it will someday--they will be ready.

“Wins and losses are almost irrelevent,” anchor Bryant Gumbel said. “Obviously, we’d prefer if they’d win. But rooting for them takes us back to a simpler time of childhood when you rooted for them because they were your team. A kid never deserts his team.”

Executive producer Steve Friedman can relate to that. “After all this time, you want me to get off the bandwagon and have them win next year?” he said. “I am in it for the long haul.”

It has been that. Both Gumbel and Friedman were born after 1945, the last time the Cubs played in the World Series. A lifetime without once having your team in the Series can be difficult medicine to swallow.

That disappointment is punctuated by 1984, when the Cubs won the first two games in what was then the best-of-five pennant playoffs, only to lose the next three in a row to, of all people, the San Diego Padres.

“When they lost the last three games, I was in a different city each time,” Gumbel said. “I didn’t want to jinx them. Think of all the chances, the plays they blew. It was asinine to lose to San Diego. They were a bad team.

“The Cubs and Tigers would have been a great World Series. I still have tickets for that World Series in my desk. Instead, we got the Padres and Tigers and one of the most forgettable World Series of all time.”

Friedman does not dwell on the disappointment of 1984, preferring to simply say, “In ‘84, I died.”

Then there is the matter of 1969 when the Cubs again had it won only to be overtaken by the New York Mets, a team Gumbel prefers to call the Mutts.

“That was a joke,” he said. “The Mutts were the worst team in baseball ever to win a World Series. The only explanation is God got irritated and forced that on us.”

The Mets, Gumbel believes, are now paying for that little indiscretion, mired in last place with the worst record in baseball. “I enjoy the plight of the Mutts,” he said. “This is as good as us winning the pennant. This gives me endless joy.”

“We don’t care where we finish as long as the Mets are below us,” Friedman said.

That seems a tad vindictive.

“We are what we are,” Gumbel said. “We like the Cubs and we always will. Atlanta and Minnesota went from last to first a couple of years ago. We went from last to fifth.”

The Cubbies are like a cult team, supported by a hard-core fan base, among them comedian Bill Murray and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, that believes Wrigley is baseball heaven and prosperity is just around the corner.