Is being a Cub fan a lifelong affliction?

1983 and 1984 were great years to be growing up a baseball fan in Chicago. I was a young pup and just starting to seriously follow baseball. The White Sox had won the AL West in '83 and the Cubs won the NL East in '84. Imagine my great discovery...we had winning baseball every year! Well over the next four years the White Sox won more games than they lost one time and the Cubs managed to do it zero times. I also came to find out that you cannot be both a Cubs fan and a White Sox fan.

So I did the smart thing (it's a family matter) and picked the Cubs.

Three years ago I had the chance to visit old Yankee Stadium in it's last year. The atmosphere, the history and the winning hooked me. I bought a Yankees hat and was on my way to becoming a Yankees fan. I really don't like switching my baseball allegiance from the Cubs but did I mention the winning?

Following the Yankees while living in Chicago can be somewhat difficult even in the day and age of this internet thing. In August of this year I started subscribing to MLB.TV which allows me to watch all of the Yankee games. So far in August I have watched more baseball games than I had in the previous 4 or 5 years combined.

Yet I find myself falling into my Cub fan habits. For those unfamiliar with Cub history there is: The Billy Goat Curse, The Fall of '69, The June Swoons, The heartbreak of 1984, the 2003 collapse that was wrongly blamed on an unfortunate fan, not winning a World Series since 1908 and the overall loosing. They have the same number of World Series wins as the Blue Jays, Mets and Marlins. The thing is that all of those teams have been in existence at least 86 year less than the Cubs. There have been a couple of games over the past two weeks where the Yankees were down by a couple of runs early and I chalked the game up as a loss. The Cubs rarely ever come back and they don't give you the impression that they will come back.

I decided not to watch the Yankees game yesterday because after three innings they were down 7-1. What a surprise to wake up the next morning and see that they ended up winning 22-9. As a matter of fact they set a Major League record of hitting three grand slams in one game.

It is all a lesson in shedding that feeling of inevitable doom that has been continually reinforced as a lifelong Cubs fan.