The Chris Moeller Archives

A Game 7 story

I've rooted passionately against the Chicago Cubs since 1984. I was nine years old. (I've been a baseball fan since I was seven, but the Cubs weren't on anybody's radar until '84.) It's a daily ritual for a little more than half the year. Did the Cardinals win? Did the Cubs lose? I live with it. I embrace it. I self-identify with it.

This status continues. But last night, I had resigned myself to their victory over Cleveland in Game 7 of the World's Series. They led 6-3 in the bottom of the 8th. My wife, Aidah, is from Kenya, and, to borrow Stephen Jay Gould's phrase in Ken Burn's Baseball, "doesn't know a baseball from a kumquat," even after three years of marriage to me. But she's a bleeding heart. And she was aware that this particular team had not won the World Series for more than a century. She declared herself a Cubs fan, and wanted to experience the moment when they ended the drought, to share in the joy of the celebration, but she never wants to experience any potential heartbreak. This is a woman who fast-forwards the DVR to the end of every Survivor episode to see if her favorite contestant has been voted off. She will only then watch that edition of the show if she is satisfied with the week's verdict at the tribal council.

But the Cubs lead by three, and I know for sure, because I read it, that no team has come back from four runs down (which Cleveland was at one point in the game last night) in a World Series "winner-take-all" game since the 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates. So, in an effort of extraordinary sportsmanship, I advance from the bedroom to the living room to tell her that the game is nearing the end and that we should watch together. Again, it is now the bottom of the 8th, and there are now two outs in that inning for Cleveland, the home team, with nobody on base. Aidah is passionately against this strategy. I've told her that there are seven outs left, combined for both sides, but she says, no, it's too early. You see, I feel that she should want to get the feel for the moment, take a chance to soak it in with so many others tied together by their televisions, not just see the last out or whatever.

She's watching her phone instead, reading Survivor commentary, I believe, and we actually argue for a bit over the remote control. There was physical violence and I'm not proud of it, but it was violence against the remote control. As I said at the beginning, I've resigned myself to the Cubs victory and this is now about posterity. I'm trying to do a nice thing for both of us. She doesn't know which team is which on first glance. She's confused about what an out is and isn't, and she depends on me entirely to explain what's going on-- yet did I mention that she's completely wrapped up emotionally in the outcome, based solely on the exhaustively-told story of the drought and the fact that she's met so many nice people that are Cubs fans.

Anyway, Ramirez reaches on an infield hit with two out for Cleveland. Guyer doubles him in. And then as Davis' game-tying home run is arching into the left-field bleachers, I am already profusely apologizing-- but also laughing like a maniac. "I am soooo sorry. For real. I forgot this was the Cubs!" And then an evil cackle escapes from my mouth. I promise her-- and I promise you now-- that I was not doing this to her. Yes, I'm thrilled that this home run has just taken place. For a time, it stands to become one of the great moments of my life, a Bartman for a new stage in my life, but it was not my intention to also manipulate and abuse my beloved.

She immediately says she needs to go to sleep. We're both deprived of it, as much of the nation will be before dawn because of this game. The Cubs botch a squeeze play, the Indians go down with but a whimper in their half of the ninth, and as extra innings commence at a 6-6 stall, the cosmos intercedes with a rainstorm in northeastern Ohio and a delay in the game. Unbelievable. In fact, that's exactly what my text message at that time said to my brother: "Unbelievable."

I quietly inform Aidah, who is trying to get to sleep but failing, lying in a room that is pitch-black, that the game is indefinitely delayed, and she now will try to go to sleep purposefully ambivalent to the outcome. I promise not to interrupt her efforts, but then the delay lasts only 17 minutes, and the Cubs score two-- and are threatening for more-- in the top of the 10th (Sidenote: Good God, what a fortuitous rain delay for the Chicago squad-- the most momentum-altering meteorological event in the sport's long history.) I saddle up to her in the bed and whisper, "Your team is ahead by two again. Do you want to watch?" And she's wide awake. She does a happy move with her arms. But she's skittish. "Only tell me when it's at the end end." 

Cleveland has three outs left, but the concept of an out, as I said, is foreign to my wife. So now we're back to where we were an hour ago except that we're now in bed, Cleveland has one fewer out than they had in the first scene, but need one fewer run to tie. The first man strikes out, and the second grounds to short. Aidah is listening to the game report from the first-ranked child of Cardinal Nation, Joe Buck, on FOX, but she's not really watching, when Guyer walks. He takes second on the Cubs' indifference, and she hears Buck say that the man who hit the home run, Davis, is coming to bat again as the tying run. In real-speed, they replay his magnificent 8th inning home run, and, only half-watching, she believes for about half a minute that she has just seen him do it again. I assure her that it's a replay of the previous, but then Davis singles to right and she sees the runner that the Cubs were indifferent to come in to score and make it a one-run game.

She bolts out of the room, making wild accusations as she goes, "You want to watch it with me because you think I'm bad luck for the Cubs. You want them to lose!" "No I don't," I say, "I mean, yes, I do want them to lose, but that's not why I'm doing this. You have to watch it if you want to enjoy the historical moment." "Are they going to win?" "Yes, still probably." "For sure?" "No, not for sure." Now we're back and forth between the bedroom and living room, talking as we go, like we're in an Aaron Sorkin script. "This is your team," I plead, half-angry at her still-refusal to embrace, or show any interest whatsoever in the Cardinals-- our family team." During a pitching change, she agrees to watch the next man hit, who if you're not keeping up, will stand at the plate as both the last chance for the Clevelanders but also their potential winning run. There's one caveat to our agreement though. She will not watch the action while in the same room as me.

Finally, I give up. The DVR is recording it anyway, and she's not comfortable watching. She goes to the bedroom to lie down again in the dark. It's approaching midnight CST. A late-inning defensive substitute for Cardinals draftee and Game 2 hero Coco Crisp has left history in the hands of little-experienced Michael Martinez (great move, Francona). He hits a dribbler to third that ends 108 years of the most melodramatic mediocrity in Western athletic history, and I go tell my wife that her team has won. She bounds out of bed, attacks the DVR, and hits the rewind to see the final moment of action and the ensuing celebration.

And all of this should help encapsulate just the suffering that the Cubs have caused the fans of other teams. Congratulations to the Chicago National League Baseball Club for their first World Series championship since before the death of the Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, a man who died in December of 1909, and incidentally was born in 1822. Since the outcome of every World Series played prior to 1920 has to be considered authentically suspect due to the influence of gamblers during that period, this is also the Cubs' most legitimate championship to date, perhaps their first legitimate one. To wrestle the National League Central Division away from the Cardinals in 2016, all they had to do was have three times as much money, and tank it in the standings on purpose for five years, hording draft picks. Then saddle themselves for eight years with a horrendous contract for the man that was formerly the Cardinals' best player, but now hits a baseball with the bracing force of a Family Circus comic strip. They overcame it all, I'll give them that. And I fought them and lost. Rooting against the law of averages turned out to also be exhausting as hell.

A lot of their fans may depart though. The appeal of the underdog fades. The soul of the team becomes forever transformed with this victory. Aidah, for one, has already declared that she will now be pulling for Cleveland. She feels bad for them. Their championship drought has now stretched to 69 years, almost exactly the same as what the Cubs was the year I was born, and it is still counting.

posted by CM @ 10:21 AM