The Post-Mortem

"Someday we'll go all the way. Someday we'll go all the way."

I'm dealing with the latest Cubs setback--their ninth consecutive playoff loss dating back to that memorable Marlins series in 2003--by putting things into perspective. Eddie Vedder's words are tinged with both hope and lament not unlike Irish songs of yore. Compared to what the Irish went through, a hundred years of suckitude ain't so bad.

The parallels between Cubs history and Irish history are unmistakable. The Irish fell under British domination and spent hundreds and hundreds of years trying to earn their freedom. The harder they tried, the more catastrophic was the disappointment. They fell under the spell of charismatic leaders who failed to deliver what they promised. They crumbled under the weight of their own history, unable to shed the memories of past failures with every new effort. Their culture cranked out stories, poems, and songs of pain, suffering, and sorrow tinged with that maddening sliver of hope. Were the songs and stories chronicles of past times or prophesies of what was to come? It's the concept expressed so beautifully by John Cusack (are we surprised with a last name like that?) in the movie High Fidelity: "What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

Do we root for the Cubs because we're masochistic? Or are we masochistic because we root for the Cubs?

Ireland tried a lot of different things in their quest for freedom from the British. They tried getting angry (like the usually mild-mannered Derrick Lee, who slammed his helmet to the ground after a strikeout, his only at-bat that didn't result in a hit last night). They tried getting political (like so many Cubs who insisted all season that the past would not affect them, particularly Lou Piniella). They went to the Spanish and the French, enlisting help from overseas (Fukudome). They turned to their Catholic faith (the holy water sprinkling before the Dodgers series). They also turned to drinking (yes, I'm looking at all you Cubs fans who know there's some vodka mixed in that orange juice as you read this at 10 am). The result was a ton of great, if tragic, stories, but no progress toward their independence (Bartman, billy goats, Leon Durham, black cats, you get the idea).

Luckily for the Irish, while they couldn't forget about their oppression, their oppression forgot about them. The British had to concentrate on World War I and its aftermath, and keeping Ireland in check was no longer on their list of priorities. The Irish never earned that great victory that had eluded them for a millennium; they sort of won by default. That didn't prevent them from claiming that a drunken raid of the Dublin post office in 1916 was the final turning point. I don't know how this could translate to the Cubs. Maybe some disease outbreak would force baseball to quarantine the 29 other teams, while Wrigley's unique blend of filth, stale beer, and urine troughs would inoculate the Cubs from its effects, thereby making them champions by default. I'm sure we'd take it at this point. The more important thing is that Ireland finally lifted itself up from the bowels of its history and rode the "Celtic Tiger" to become a normal, modernized, fully-functioning place, kind of like the Boston Red Sox.

Even though this series was doomed from the start, I still thought they would come back last night and eke one out. All they needed was one win to lift the pressure. I could not believe they looked so tight. You knew things were bad when the leader of this team, Ryan Dempster, threw seven walks in the first game of the series. He set the tone, and we were nervous in every facet of the game from there on out. The usually happy-go-lucky Alfonso Soriano looked as if he was awaiting the electric chair in every dugout shot of him last night. No one stepped up to break the funk and breathe some life into the team. James Joyce wrote, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." That team was stuck in the nightmare last night with no alarm clock in sight.

My advice to Cubs fans would be to go out for a walk, read a book, or hug someone you love. Hell, watch the Bears--they're playing the Lions this week. Forget about last night, but don't forget the spirit of those 97 wins. It was a fun season. And who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and have our own World War I break out. Here's to wishing.

See what I'm talking about: