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Like most other serious Cub people I know, I find that these rare periods of playoff contention occur on an almost theological plane. Cub fandom is fundamentally about hoping for possibilities not seen, such as a glimpse of our team playing when the ivy on the walls at Wrigley has turned to the brown and gold of fall; or the thought that someone besides the Tribune Company really will own and run this operation soon; or the vision of a lineup that doesn’t get shut down in big games by karma, in the form of opposing pitchers who once were in the Cubs organization. Of course it’s also about the persistence of human fallibility (Leon Durham, 1984; Brant Brown, 1998; Alex Gonzalez, 2003), the reality of evil (the New York Mets, 1969; the New York Mets, 2004), and the inability of our lowly human minds to understand acts of God–not that we don’t try. As I walked out of Wrigley after witnessing the Bartman debacle four years ago, I overheard the thick-necked fan in front of me weighing the deeper meaning, the moral and ethical consequences, before sighing. In a tone revealing both repentance and rage, he said, “He oughta do the honorable thing and kill his self.”
As the Sun-Times reported today, quite a few aldermen are more than happy to accept an offer of rights to playoff tickets from the Cubs organization. If you and I want to go to a playoff game, we get to wait vainly in line with all the other unconnected mopes out there, or we could try paying exorbitant prices to a scalper, such as Wrigley Field Premium Tickets, the legal scalping operation the Tribune company runs itself. Right now, in fact, the Cubs are being especially magnanimous to anyone who wants to get season tickets for next year: ” The Cubs Season Ticket Wait List allows Cubs fans to get in line for season tickets,” the organization’s Web site says. That’s right: we’re allowed to wait.
I know, I know, this city is so full of corruption, waste, and official incompetence that insider dibs on baseball playoff tickets is small stuff by comparison.
Yet I have even less confidence that the City Council and mayor won’t turn whatever happens into an opportunity for additional privilege or political gain. (Perhaps a tax on Milwaukee beer as a way to plug the city’s budget hole?)
