Cubs fans are everywhere. Indefatigably feisty with hope. But, from among their frustrated lot, is there anybody alive who was at West Side Grounds to cheer the Cubbies to their most recent World Series championship?
We're talking 1908.
They haven't won a World Series in the lifetime of an Illinois kid from Tampico, a former play-by-play radio announcer for a Cubs farm team in Iowa, an actor who never earned an Oscar but did win the White House, 92-year-old Ronald Reagan.
It's a sporting pain that outstretches the Curse of the Bambino that has nagged Boston Red Sox followers since, in scandalous action after a 1918 World Series conquest, Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees.
When the Cubbies last ruled baseball, it was the year Henry Ford introduced the Model-T. America's homes were lit by lanterns. Teddy Roosevelt was president. Bob Hope was a kindergarten jokester.
Cubs fans, in a 95th year of unyielding frustrations, are the world's most resilient, most faithful, most adorable, most fantasizing sports colony.
As the summer of 2003 wanes, hope is again churning at Wrigley Field, an ancient darling among ballparks that opened in 1916 but awaits its first climactic World Series bellowing of "Cubs Win! Cubs Win!"
Cubs pitching is young and strong, molded by a familiar coach, former Devil Rays manager Larry Rothschild. Sammy Sosa keeps uncorking home runs, but will he ever feel a Cubs joy that Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg and Harry Caray never experienced?
Again, the Cubs tease as September nears, in spirited NL Central combat with St. Louis and Houston.
In classic Wrigley pews and on Northside porches and rooftops from which disciples steal a peer, as well as in precincts on every continent, evolving Cubbies generations know the most recent pennant was earned as World War II subsided in 1945, a seventh NL flag since the World Series winning splendor of '08.
Cubfolk ache with negative facts, like about 1969 when a 91/2-game mid-August lead was blown to make the Miracle Mets possible and about 1984 when victory in the first two games of a best-of-five NL playoff led to an Orwellian meltdown against the Padres.
Grandparents pass down hardball, hard-luck stories. Who doesn't wonder how the Cubs could've let Greg Maddux get away, when he'd become a gushing of hope with a Cy Young Award season in 1992? Off he goes to Atlanta and pitches to Cys again in 1993, '94 and '95 as the Braves rose from puny to strong.
Will we ever see ...
I want to watch Cubs fans, especially those with lifetime loyalties, experience the World Series moment that has been craved since Jack Johnson was heavyweight boxing king. It would, I think, have 10 times the worldly impact, maybe 100 times, of Angels or Bucs jubilation, as a notable loser suddenly embraces the ultimate reward.
I say, win one for the millions who, for so long, have had Cubbies dreams, including the Gipper.
FAST FOOD: This year's Byron Leftwich could be quarterback Ryan Dinwiddie whose mini-major Boise State offense averaged 474 yards and scored 136 touchdowns while winning 20 times the past two seasons. ... Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel says he never exercises "because it makes the ice jump right out of my glass." ... Most exciting collegiate receiver I saw in '02 was Pitt's Larry Fitzgerald, a kid with magical hands who returns this season with 15 solid new pounds on a 6-foot-4 frame that blurs 40 yards in 4.3 seconds. ... Eli Manning did what brother Peyton never could, beating the Florida Gators, and now the Ole Miss quarterback will be pushed hard for the Heisman, a trophy his heroic sibling and daddy Archie only came close to winning.
NOT EVEN CLOSE: We hear about the strong, par-busting golf games of athletes who became famous in other sports, like John Elway and Mario Lemieux, but it's wrong to think they could maybe walk as champions on some PGA Tour.
Johnny Bench was the greatest baseball catcher ever and has been a low-handicap golfer more than 20 years. Some wondered if the old Cincinnati Reds hero might have the stuff to flourish among the seniors of the Champions Tour.
Bench has tried the tour several times with little success, but a definitive word on the depth of the difference between even the finer jock golfers and the game's legitimate pros came at this month's 3M Classic in Minnesota.
Bench's first-round score was 97, including six bogeys, four doubles, a triple and two quads in a row. He played Nos. 7-14 in 18-over par, finished the 54-hole tournament at plus-47, 21 strokes behind next-to-last finisher Tom Shaw and 58 in arrears of winner Wayne Levi.
