Once Again

Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away
Do the Cubbies still play
On their ivy-covered burial ground?
Good questions, those. Once asked by Steve Goodman, they are still no more easily answered now than they were more than thirty years ago when he first recorded "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request." But since the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant, as Steve so precisely reminded us, was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan we have nothing but the future to contemplate. Again. Another year, another baseball season has passed and the Chicago Cubs are once again no closer to that elusive World Series than they were back in April.
If this sounds like pessimism, please understand that I believe there is no more hopeful human being on this planet than your average Cubs fan. This year the team from the North Side powered through their season and through their wild card game and bounced the Evil Empire in the form of the Los Angeles Dodgers from the postseason before slowing to a crawl and ran out of steam in the National League Championship Series.
Good news? There is some: Another perennial loser, the New York Mets find themselves at the top of the National League, giving Jon Stewart a reason to enjoy his retirement. At the beginning of the 2015 season, the Metropolitans were listed as thirty to one for their chances to show up in that last game of the year. All kinds of wacky things can happen. That, and we are less than four months away from pitchers and catchers reporting for Spring Training.
Hope, Emily Dickinson once reminded us, is the thing with feathers. Or a Cubs jersey. Winter will now descend on Lake Michigan and the surrounding area, bringing everything to a standstill as those of us who chose to believe that bringing a goat to the ballpark or that Robert Zemeckis was some sort of baseball visionary will find a new place to hang our dreams and fanatical aspirations. Cubs fans invent ways to bring a light to the end of a very dark tunnel.
A lot of people, when disappointed for more than a century, might choose to reconsider their options. Going to the well for one hundred and seven years and coming up empty would make some folks wonder if they might be looking for water in the wrong spot. Not Cubs fans. We're a patient bunch. And a little bit sad. Be kind.