I could make a joke about how we'll all talk about and remember where we were when the Cubs finally won three games in a row in 2011. It's funny to highlight and kick around. But here's the thing...
You will remember where you were.
You won't forget that the Cubs took until nearly August and a home series against by far the worst team in baseball to finally crack the three-game barrier. Because in a season that will wash away into the resevoir of bad Cubs baseball -- a resevoir that would have burst levies made by antimantium at this point -- it's the moments that are spectacularly bad and pathetic that will stick out just as much as the winning moments we've so seldom enjoyed.
I'm 30, and I have sat through a lifetime of bad Cubs baseball already. I can remember being in the stands for various errors, blown saves, a complete absence of timely hitting, strikeouts in RBI situations, hanging curveballs, poor baserunning, and whatever else marks out a bad baseball team. But they all just blend together. Instead of watching individual bad moments, I feel like I've just watched a mass painting of it. I can barely recall the games I've seen where the Cubs were bad, but I know exactly what happened in them (though the day that Neifi Perez, Jacque Jones, and Ryan Dempster contrived to let two runs score on a sac fly against the Braves in 2006 or so sticks out pretty clearly).
And sitting through all that bad Cubs baseball defines who we are as fans. You'll sit at the bar, think of the time you've invested in your life to watching the Cubs, and most likely you'll order at least seven more libations.
But it's the moments of unique badness that will bring a smile to your face later on down the road. You'll use it to highlight just how much you've slogged through, and to point out just how sweet it'll be when it all pays off. There will come a time when you'll giggle at the thought of how much it took to get to that three game win-streak. A blown save, and needing an 8th inning comeback to just get to extras, where it took a fly ball lost in the sun by a good twenty feet to beat the worst team in baseball.
I guarantee that two, or five, or ten years down the road, you'll be sitting at a bar with a good baseball friend, or having an argument with some fan of another team, and you'll say, "Remember that time it took until August to win three in a row?". It'll happen.
Sam Fels is the proprietor of The Committed Indian, an unofficial program for the Blackhawks. You may have seen him hocking the magazine outside the United Center at Gate 3. The program is also available for purchase online. Fels is a lifelong 'Hawks fan and he also writes for Second City Hockey .
