It's Baseball

* * *       It was a very good day for a game, and without being aware of it The Kid began to settle down and relax. He caught The Shooter looking at him several times, and once he winked at The Kid.

       “I told you, Kid!” The Shooter said. “Ain’t this just great!” The big man waved a huge paw out toward the grass of the outfield and up at the sun-filled sky.

       They were sitting in a section that was not considered a good place to sit to see the ball game, but it suited their purpose perfectly; they got the very hot noon sun and then when it began to get muggy and stinking hot in the late innings, they were in the shade. Many people sat in this section and they were the regulars who had been sitting there for many years and many knew each other by their first names, and nearly everybody knew each other by sight. They were not young or old, and there was nothing special about them except that they sat in this section and they were all experts on baseball. Some of the old fans who had been sitting in the section for years, who were now retired and did not have to leave in the fifth or sixth inning to go to work, brought vacuum bottles of ice water and baskets of food and large sun hats and field glasses and spent the whole day there; the women talked of their babies, or their grandbabies, or they knitted, or they just sat in the sun. If a stranger happened to push into the section, which did not occur very often, but did now and then on big games when every seat in the park was taken, the stranger, if he was baseball wise at all, would soon become aware that he had gotten into a private family picnic. Nothing was ever said to the stranger, because if he came back often enough he would become a regular. It was very obvious right away if a stranger could become a regular or not. There was one rule: if he complained about the poor view of the game, he did not belong there at all. It was not the place for the fan who was able to slip away from his office for one game and wanted a thrill every pitch. Baseball to those in the section was not so much of a thrill of the game as it was a part of life, as unquestioned as working, or sleeping, or eating, and it wasn’t a game, it was baseball.
-- Richard Jessup in Chapter 4 of   The Cincinnati Kid, published in 1963.

* * *

It’s a hyperlinked world these days, and things don’t happen at the pace of a baseball game anymore. Some call this progress and some call it decay. Whatever it is, in the new pace of our culture, events happen fast.

I have to admit that I didn’t see what happened yesterday coming. Dusty Baker mentioned a website called “firedusty.com” -- which is actually firedustybaker.com -- in his press conference. The beat writers dutifully reported it: Paul Sullivan in The Chicago Tribune, Mike Kiley in the Chicago Sun-Times and Bruce Miles in the Daily Herald.

Unbeknownst to me, firedustybaker.com had recently linked to my post from about two weeks ago, listing a number of examples when I had thought Dusty mismanaged games. Apparently people read the beat writers’ columns, visited firedustybaker.com and then followed the link over here because I saw a steady stream of traffic from firedustybaker.com all day long. It was as much traffic as I normally see in two weeks or a month by the middle of the afternoon.

In a lot of ways it was exciting to see that happen. It makes me wish I had spent more time on the entry that the site linked. I had rushed it, trying to put it together in a short window of time before I flew back to Chicago for my sister’s wedding. Reading it again, I suppose it isn’t bad, but I could have been more thorough, and written it better. Oh well. Sometimes when you write, you have to say “Good enough” and put it out there. It’s what a character observes in Garrison Keillor’s short story, “Love Me:”

"Writers like to think that writing is like Arctic exploration or flying the Atlantic solo, but actually it's more like golf. You've got to just do it and be happy. Some writers spend twenty minutes lining up a four-foot putt. Some writers pitch a tent on the green and stay for a week and brood about friction and energy and the gender of their putter. What's the problem? Take your shot. It's no shame to bogey. Just do it and have a good time. Don't base your whole life on worrying about whether you're any good or not. If you need to know, you shouldn't be playing this game."

As I write this, however, I realize that I’m being a bit self-indulgent. This site is about the narrative of the Chicago Cubs, not its writers. After all, the small burst of attention to Agony & Ivy will subside, and most of yesterday’s visitors won’t return because there’s nothing much sensational here to bring them back. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just how it is.

Still, as I see this many people swing by, indicating that Cubs Nation has become resoundingly negative -- and rightfully so -- I think about the outlook I had when I wrote a concluding passage to an entry at the beginning of the season, in response to a Bill Simmons column about Cubs fans and Red Sox fans posted on ESPN’s Page 2:

Cubs fans have a team to be proud of. We don't let the media define us. One time sitting the bleachers would make this obvious. We are smart fans with independent reasoning. We don't hold a Bartman grudge. I was at that game, and it was Prior's faltering & Gonzalez's error that devastated us, not Bartman. Dusty didn't trust his bullpen, but we didn't either. We thought Prior could do it, and he was doing it, right until the moment that he wasn't. And advising us to give in to a playoff run? If only you could have been in Chicagoland, Bill, during September and October of 2003. I think we rivaled Boston as far as giving in to supporting a team. Maybe we even surpassed Boston, since deep down, you all admitted that you were half-expecting the Sox to blow it again last year. In 2003, at Game 6, in the 7th inning, Cubs fans expected to win that game. We believed that our team would win that game. We knew they were going to the World Series. Maybe we're all a little worse off for having been burned so badly, the way Boston had been time and time again. Next time around, though, I'll still believe they will win the game. We're nobody's bitch, even if we are delusional.

That was optimism, and I had it even though 2004 was bad. Well, 2005 has been even worse. There are a confluence of reasons, Dusty Baker’s managing being one, injuries being another, as well as a lack of leadership (as a commenter named Adam rightfully pointed out yesterday), among others. In a few weeks, when we watch other teams compete in October and we see once again what composes a winning team, it will be time to take stock and hope that our team learns from its mistakes, and prepares well for 2006. We can debate over what that entails, whether it’s firing Dusty or signing bullpen help or whatever else one thinks is necessary on paper.

Except, in the back of our minds, we remember that in this sport sometimes low percentage moves pay off while high percentage moves backfire. Not always, and not usually, but sometimes. Professional and armchair experts alike are often wrong. No one really knows. We keep this in mind and begin to hope again for 2006, in the off chance that next season will once again be thrilling. I was hopeful at the beginning of the season, and next April I will be again. If they fall flat once more, I’ll become upset and then I’ll get over it as I try to regain a larger perspective and rekindle hope as I do every year the Cubs don’t win, which is every year. (Until they finally do win, which will be next year.)

This is how the cycle goes and I see no point in maintaining a frothy anger. It's fine for some people -- and more power to them for their determined enthusiasm -- but I prefer not to stay so negative because if I did I might find that fifty years had gone by and I had spent much of the time pissed off. Maybe not, but why risk it? Will I enjoy the Cubs winning more because I was pissed off while they were losing? I can't help the reflex, but I can stop it from lingering.

I care as much as anyone, but it's never so simple as we think. The sport has its own rhythms and patterns and every year we get to sit back and appreciate them nearly every day for six months, even in the bad seasons. This can be its own reward, until the good season finally happens.

It’s baseball.