Games 161 & 162, 2006

The final weekend of Cubs baseball had everything except good starting pitching. There were homeruns and strikeouts, last minute heroics, extraordinary blunders, exceptional feats and plays, extra innings and rain delays, boredom and suspense, strategy and routine, larger context and bigger questions, and even the resignation of the team president. Where to begin?

I don’t really know. It’s not a linear mindset, this mood that resonates on the final game of the season of a last place team. It’s much too jumbled.

I planned this weekend a long time ago, long before I knew for certain where I would be living and what I would be doing when September arrived. I hoped like I do every year that it would turn out to be a pivotal final game, where the fate and success of the season hung in the balance, and I could be there to see history unfold. As it turns out, the fate of the season was decided by the middle of May, and all the weekend served to accomplish for me was to sidestep my commitments of time and effort for one more weekend before the avalanche that is the first year of law school gathers too much momentum.

It worked. I lost myself in Saturday’s game, unabashedly cheering like I was 11 again as the Cubs mounted a late inning comeback after being down 8 to 0. When Henry Blanco singled up the middle, I said to AWE, sitting next to me, “That’s how rallies get started -- little lucky hits like that.” And it actually was a rally. When Jacques Jones singled to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, pride in playing and following this graceful game was palpable. For a moment, we all forgot about standings.

We waited out the rain delay and extra innings, because at a certain point, we had gone so far and seen so much that to betray witnessing the ending felt unconscionable. AWE remarked, “It’s like this game has a mind of its own,” and he captured it perfectly. The game felt like a contest between greater forces using the players in front of us as pawns. Then, when Derrek Lee took an unexpected at bat, I wondered if fate wasn’t on the Cubs side after all.

No such luck.

Still, even after Ryu failed to escape a second jam with two outs and the Cubs were down 2 runs, we sang the 14th inning stretch with Len and Bob and a few hundred other fans as we could see our breath, figuring that the theatrics were over and the Cubs had come up short once again, but knowing at the same time that having been able to suspend disbelief for those extra 4 and a half innings was worth something in its own right.

But, when it’s not your season, it’s just not your season. No, fate was not on the Cubs side, and by fate I mean reliable depth of pitching. The two are often confused, I’ve noticed. Or maybe fate tried as much as it could, pulling the rug out from under the Rockies’ right fielder as Zambrano’s pinch hit fly ball sailed towards him, but as he sat there on his ass, the ball landed perfectly in his glove. Despite sitting through 14 long innings just to see the Cubs come up short, I couldn’t help but smile in appreciation at the fact that some greater force with a penchant for flair had in some sense just winked at us, teasing us in that final representative play of the 161st game, inventing yet another way for the Cubs to lose -- a baseball finding its way to a player who had slipped and fallen.

The clouds rolled through on Saturday night with our conversations and beers, and game 162 arrived with Wayne and Kathy Messmer greeting us in anthem as we stepped out from the tunnel towards our seats on a perfect, glorious Chicago fall afternoon. Hot in the sun, cold in the shade, wind off the lake, smog brushed away by the rain the night before -- it had everything. Every person within earshot of us commented at some point about how this was a perfect afternoon for baseball, it seemed to me.

It didn’t start out so well, but the Cubs pulled it out in front of a full crowd. I’m sure it helped that the Bears didn’t play until tonight, but even so -- Cubs fans arrived in full force to reassert our foundational support for this team, despite the long season and the uncertain future of so many characters involved. From the cheers, you’d have thought the game meant something, which is exactly why it did, and always does.

And so another season has ended. Again, as every year, I paused and watched as the last fans walked out, soaking in the feeling of Wrigley Field as its pulse begins to slow in preparation for its hibernation. The feeling of the last game is hope for the first game 6 months later, when everything will be new, and the knowledge that as much as the offseason feels as though something is missing, the buoyancy of the new season could not exist without the ending sigh on this last afternoon.

I’m starting to collect my thoughts for my final essay on the season as it marks the narrative of my life, probably my favorite essay to write each year. Again, so much has happened in just one short baseball season that April feels like years ago; and again, it went by so fast that it seems like just last week. It’s the sense of time as measured not only in days and weeks, but in baseball -- and it’s a big reason why I invest so much of myself into this game, and this team.

In the meantime, I have a few other things to write along the way. But for now, for today, it’s enough to know that the weekend worked. A good game despite a loss, and a great game on the final day, the last note echoing for at least a few weeks, drowned out no doubt by the clamor of resignations and contracts both offered and omitted, but still that note carries on a while, reminding us that there is something good in even the worst seasons, and if you’re lucky enough to show up on the right afternoon, every once in a while you’ll hear it loud and clear.