That Unique Feeling

As I’ve returned home and caught up on everything that’s been happening in the Cubs’ world, it occurs to me that maybe it’s for the best that the Northsiders will not make the playoffs this year. One reason it might be for the best is the injuries. If the Cubs had Houston’s record but were still as tattered -- with Walker, Ramirez, Hairston, Cedeno, and Barrett all dealing with injury fallout -- there is no doubt that they would be undermanned in a series. Last night, even, Maddux gutted it through 9 innings to hope for a win to keep the chance at 15 wins alive, but the offense just wasn’t there. The lineup the Cubs can offer is not a playoff caliber lineup. Maybe other people have been saying this and if so I’m sorry for repeating the obvious, but I’m just getting to it.

I’m not going to take a shot at the existential question of whether it is better to make the playoffs and lose -- better to have loved and lost -- than to avoid the heartache altogether. That question might have been appropriate if they had been closer in the race down the stretch. For me, after spending two solid weeks concerned with nothing but baseball but hardly any of it involving the 2005 Cubs, it’s just nice to get back home to watch the end of their season.

Today is Prior’s last start, for example, and I want to see him end on a high note. We all do. As the thoughts of the few of us watching are split between what we watch and what we think it implies for next year, we want to see the kind of performance that we would call ‘stepping up’ if the game mattered. We want to see that fire. Yet, even as I think about it, my thoughts turn elsewhere.

This is the first time after four consecutive seasons that I won’t be at the final regular season home game at Wrigley, and I miss it strongly. There is a unique feeling, a vibe among the crowd that I would describe as a sense of reaffirmation, a sense that even knowing the ending, it was all still worth it. Worth it not in the sense that it was good, but in the sense that even in an under-.500 season you were a part of something that other people shared with you. Many fans do not feel this way, and think they wasted their time, but the catch is that as a result, they won’t be at the stadium for the last game. You end up with a crowd who wants to be there despite themselves, and they will help each other come to terms with this season even without fully talking about it, as it slips into the past with all the rest. I’ve felt it, but this year I won’t. It’s not a feeling of optimism, or even anything positive per se. In fact, it’s not like any other feeling that I know of, but closest to a blend of weariness, and admission that often we cannot control what happens with things we care about, and camaraderie.

Yet, this year I don’t think I need to be there to finalize coming to terms with the season. I did that a while ago. On Sunday I’ll drive to Houston and hopefully we’ll see Maddux pitch one more time so that the few Cub fans in attendance can let him know that we know that he pitched one hell of a good season even if it isn’t officially filed that way. Hopefully we’ll see a game that’s still meaningful to Houston to provide some tension. Hopefully we’ll see Lee win the batting race, and finish the best season a Cubs first baseman ever had with a flourish. There is all that to finalize, but there is no coming to terms: by the time we get there, I’ll already know that we were already a part of something this season, and I’ll have felt camaraderie, and I’ll have put the weariness behind me, and I'll have already decided it was worth it.

Today, though, I remember the feeling of coming to terms with the end of a Cubs baseball season quite strongly. I was not expecting this. I’ll take a shower here in a little while and work on some other writing until game time, and then I’ll sit to watch the last game in Wrigley from 2005 on television. And I’ll ask myself, “Man, what am I going to do with all my time this offseason?” I’ve been avoiding that question as long as I can, but it’s a question that is entangled with that feeling I’ve tried to describe, so today I cannot avoid it any longer. What a pity that even a season like this one has to end, because I’d rather stave off the question a while longer.