The Chris Moeller Archives

Exploring the twisted mind of a Cubs fan

The Chicago Cubs' current 8-game losing streak provides as good a time as any to tell you about the book I'm reading: "Your Brain On Cubs," a 2008 collection of essays pertaining to the neuroscience of the game of baseball, and a study of how and why fans and players behave the way they do. (The book was edited by a Cubs rooter, incidentally.) There are chapters in the book on topics as varied as hitting, talent evaluation, and fan loyalty, but the one that piqued my curiosity the most is the one by Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein that tackled superstitions and so-called "curses" that many people believe influence the game.

The Cubs' most famous curse is the one supposedly cast on them by tavern owner Billy Sianis in 1945 when his pet goat was refused admission to Wrigley Field for the World Series. The Cubs have not advanced to the Fall Classic since, and today, both the club and its fans seemed to have bought into the popular myth almost entirely. The team's front office invited a priest into the clubhouse to perform an exorcism before last year's playoff series against the Dodgers, and the head of a dead goat is now discarded semi-annually upon the Harry Caray statue that stands guard over the entrance of Cubs Park.

Baseball superstitions are as old and as widespread as the game itself. Anthropologist George Gmelch believes this is because the players and fans have such little control over their fates. Players are looking for any edge they can get in the practice of a trade that is such an inexact science, and fans look on even more helplessly from the grandstand or from in front of their television sets at home.

Baseball superstitions are not unlike a religion, viewed as a form of superstition by psychologist Pascal Boyer. He has suggested four explanations for the existence of religion, each filling a basic human need: 1) The human mind demands explanations. 2) The human heart seeks comfort. 3) Human society requires order, and 4) The human intellect is illusion-prone.

Human beings, and other animals, for that matter, often have a difficult time accepting that sequential events are not causally related. Our brains are designed to learn from experience, and when no simple explanation for an outcome exists, we're capable of conjuring up some pretty elaborate fantasies to explain. Peering through this lens, it becomes easy to believe that an anomaly like a team failing to appear in a World Series for 63 years, and failing to win one for an entire century, might be caused by a goat having been ejected from a baseball stadium.

I consider myself a rationalist in respect to both life and baseball. In fact, being a fan of the rival St. Louis Cardinals, rather than the Cubs, helped me to man up a while back and confront my own superstitions. I started to tell myself that perhaps it's that burdening belief itself in such a large, insidious superstition that has actually acted as part-culprit to the Cubs' championship drought. I don't want my team to be like that.

Every baseball fan has heard now of that sad sack Cubs fan who reached for the foul ball during the 2003 National League Championship Series and possibly prevented his team from recording a pivotal, late-game out, but fewer recall, or have even heard about, the ball booted by the Cubs' shortstop later that same inning. Which play had a greater impact? And was the infielder, in the wake of the dropped foul fly previous, then playing under the implausible notion that the team was now predestined to fail? Of course, there's a science to the notion that the failure to record an important out may have a negative impact on the outcome of a game. We just have to always remember not to blame it on a goat that's surely been dead since before Truman left office.

Some popular superstitions have become so absurdly vague that they help to damage the credibility of superstitions at large. Take the "Ex-Cubs Factor," for example. Is having former Cubs players on your post-season roster supposed to help or hinder the team's chances? Ex-Cub Bill Buckner infamously damaged Boston's chances of winning the 1986 World Series with his defensive boner, former Cub Dennis Eckersley gave up Kirk Gibson's unforgettable home run in the '88 Series, and ex-Small Bears' reliever Mitch Williams gave up a legendary walkoff home run in Game 7 of the '93 Series. But the slugger who hit the Williams pitch over the wall was Joe Carter, another ex-Cub, and former Cubs Ken Holtzman, Bill Madlock, Rick Monday, Bruce Sutter, Luis Gonzalez, Mark Bellhorn, and Mark Grace not only became World Champions on other teams, but were postseason heroes. Lou Brock, traded by the Cubs to the Cardinals in 1964 in what's considered one of the most-lopsided trades in baseball history, owns the highest World Series batting average of all-time. In other words, the "Ex-Cubs Factor" is neither good nor bad for your team, just a product of the angst and self-absorption of many Cubs fans.

I've made a conscious effort to think about the game more scientifically, and less reflexively, in recent years, but it's a challenge to abandon the routine of "positivity" that had been built up over time. (I still have the bottle cap twisted off the bottle of "Bud" Light I drank the night "Bud" Smith tossed a no-hitter in 2001.) As a fan, there's simply no pleasure to be mined from the game if you don't believe that you're somehow an important cog in the mechanations of the game. My cheering and my positive thoughts, reserved for the Cardinals only, must be helping somehow, no? Without even thinking about it, I talk back to the action on my television. I exclaim "Let's go Yadi," or "Let's go Albert" as those players come to bat, even though the hitters likely can't make out what the secondbaseman might be saying, let alone what I'm mumbling to them in my apartment 300-some miles away. I'm booing Chris Duncan this week, but only because it makes me feel better.

And that's the crux of what all of it is about: Feeling better. As Hood writes, "A belief in the supernatural can give people a deep sense of connection with the past and with each other. Such beliefs impart a consideration that the mind will outlive the body." Athletes, their bosses, and we, as fans, feel a united sense of purpose when we possess a mutual desire for success and we're each doing our part (once Duncan stops holding us all back, of course). Donating my positive vibes to the cause is the least I can do-- for the team and for me.

posted by CM @ 7:13 PM