Cubs Fans Prepare For Year Of Stupidity, Silliness

All this losing has taken its toll.

It's taken a toll on Cubs fans, the earnest ones, the ones with sleeved hearts, the ones who believe every year -- or at least every year that the team has a halfway-decent shot at success -- is the year it's going to happen. It's taken a toll on these people. And yet they continue to believe. Good for them, right?

But it's also taken a toll on us. Who's us? Us is the people that want to go to a baseball game in mid-June and not worry about the morons behind us talking about the Billy Goat. Us is the people want to be able to ride the train through the Addison stop without seeing the idiots in front of us with racist t-shirts on. Us is the people that are sick of those of you that say if you saw him, you'd punch Steve Bartman in the face, even though they would have done the same thing in 2003, because why? Because like we said: they're idiots.

Us is the people that actually enjoy baseball. You know, the game? The process of hitting and pitching and fielding and of sitting in the sun in Wrigley Field with a cold beer in our hands and watching baseball without the nonsensical thought in our heads that winning or losing has anything to do with curses, or boogeymen, or a farm animal.

In fact, it might be safe to say the only people this unbelievable 100-year losing streak hasn't taken a toll on is the ones that thrive on that stupidity. The ones that draw some sort of identity from their relationship as a "cursed" Cubs fan. You people are stupid. Stop talking. Leave the rest of us to our baseball, please.

Anyway, this rant has a point. Baseball season is beginning, which means it's time once again to constantly re-assess the mental state of Cubs fans. We'll be doing our fair share of it in this space in the weeks and months to come. For now, though, here's a good primer. There's lots of talk in there about history and symmetry and curses and the rest of it, and not as much talk about whether Carlos Zambrano will keep his strikeout rate high this year. See what we mean?

Baseball, people. Focus on the baseball.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger who is punching the first person he sees in a bonzai headband. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.