Zubeneschamali

If you follow me here or on Twitter, you know how much of a Cubs fan I am. I've talked before about how important the Cubs were to my childhood, or at least their failures. >.< But that's something you have to understand about why them winning the World Series (THE CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!) is such a big deal. It's not just that they hadn't won a championship since 1908, the longest any U.S. sports team has gone without by a good forty years. It's not just that my grandfather went his entire life without seeing them win, and my dad has gone 75 years without seeing them win (like the tons of other people being spontaneously honored on the bricks outside Wrigley Field), and that watching and listening to the Cubs with them was such an important part of my childhood. It's not just that there are sweet stories like David Ross, the oldest player ever to be in the World Series, hitting a home run last night, or the rookie Carl Edwards, Jr., starting to pitch in the crucial bottom of the tenth inning, or that the emininetly shippable Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo (known as Bryzzo because they're best buds and bat one after the other) collaborated for the last out.

It's that after decades, even a century, of Cub fans going for years without even a shot at the playoffs and then having their hearts broken by ALMOST getting there but not quite, we've learned to protect ourselves. Like late-series SPN fans, we don't get our hopes up that we're going to get what we want. We have low expectations and are happy when we beat them. We see things start to go downhill, just start to decline, and we loudly proclaim, "Told you so! That's why we can't have nice things!" and give up hope. If we actually fall behind, we just want it to be over quickly so we don't have to watch.

And yet.

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In honor of LJ posting day, I'm posting to say why I'm not posting.

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The first Major League baseball game I can remember going to, I was nine years old. We went to a White Sox game every year--my school district had a deal where straight A's got you discount tickets, and even though my dad's allegiance to the Cubs was stronger than my Mom's allegiance to the White Sox, their mutual desire to avoid driving through city traffic all the way to the North Side was greater. That year, my favorite aunt came down from Michigan when the Detroit Tigers were in town, and I was so excited to go to a game at Comiskey with her.

Turns out, it was the day Jack Morris pitched a no-hitter for the Tigers. At the time, I couldn't appreciate the historic importance of seeing a game like that one; I was just mad that my team was on the losing side, and spectacularly so.

Well, this weekend I got the opportunity to see if it stung less as a grown-up.

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This post is first of all to celebrate my first-ever root canal finally being done.  After three tries spanning six months.  It wasn't painful, just uncomfortable to have my mouth propped open that long.  But yay, it's done and now I can veg the rest of the night.

I also wanted to post pics of my weekend, which included one of the coolest ballpark trips ever.  See, my dad and I started this thing a few years ago where we go to a different baseball stadium every summer.  We've been to Wrigley on the North Side and both old and new Comiskey/whatever-the-hell-it's-called-this-week on the South Side; RFK Stadium and the new Nationals Stadium in DC; old Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Philly; new Detroit; Boston, Toronto, Minnesota, Denver, both L.A.s, and San Diego.  This year, it was Cleveland's turn.  (I guess it had to happen some time.  (No offense to anyone from Cleveland.))

The cool thing was that Cleveland was doing a 1920s Throwback Night, which meant the uniforms, the music, the graphics, were all 1920s.  (Or slightly later, as my dad kept pointing out with the music.)   I've never seen "Huzzah!" on a ballpark scoreboard before.

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