When my parents moved to Chicagoland in 1982, it became clear they were never returning above the border to Canada. So my dad went all in. Falling in love with the 1982 Cubs roster which included future Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins and Ryne Sandberg. By the time we moved to Ohio in 1984, the Cubs love had stuck. We would go to Cincinnati Reds games and my dad would root for the Cubs (who weren't even in the ballpark).
After leaving the Air Force for law school in 2007, I was already one year into my marriage to a life long Cubs fan, a man who lived in a western suburb that could just as easily root Southside as North. He's a man who considers Greg Maddux a Cub always even though he gained his legacy as a Brave. He was 9 when Andre Dawson joined the squad with his big heart and 10 when Mark Grace entered the infield and completed many double plays.
These are the types of things baseball does to you. It gets into your history and gives you heroes you never forget. To fall in love with baseball at age 10 is to fall in love with the game forever. And this is the emotion perfectly captured by Cohen in this book.
So back to 2007, when my husband and I began attending Cubs games in earnest. Buying 15, 20, 25 game packs and joining the season ticket waiting list at position 32,329. This continued until our son was born in 2012, curtailing our discretionary funds and discretionary time. When we moved to Tennessee in 2015, Ricketts had purchased the team (we actually ran into him at a game and thanked him for hiring Theo and ensuring him that we were Cubs fans no matter how bad they had to get before they got better) and the team was right on the cusp of something fantastic. So we watched from the South when they went back to the post-season and we saw something special.
In 2016 we watched as the team won and won and won. It was really marvelous to see. But we watched the post season with the trepidation of all Cubs fans. With the idea that it was always going to be out of reach. That the World Series was against Cleveland was mostly inconsequential, aside from the fact that my friend Blair got to watch his brother play against his beloved Cubs. He was probably asked 1,000,000 times over the course of a week and a half, whether he was conflicted at all about whether he would root for his brother Jason and the Indians or the Cubs. But he's a good guy so it really wasn't even a question. He'd root for his brother. The Cubs could wait another 108 years. But it seems fate is inexorable.
The book perfectly captures the feeling of a winding spring, coiling and taking on tension that comes with every post season. And although I knew the outcome, I was still stressed reading about it all over again.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I look forward to thinking of the Cubs as a winning club full of champions for years to come.
4/5 Stars.
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