Chicago’s iconic journalist,
columnist, pundit, and Cubs fan, Mike Royko once ruminated on what he learned
from his years as a Chicago Cubs baseball fan: "It taught a person that if
you try hard enough and long enough, you'll still lose and that's the story of
life."
He lived through a lot of history of
Cubs defeat. Sometimes the Cubs got close to world series play only to let errors or faulty
complaints about how a fan interfering with an outfielders catch of a foul ball
led to a playoff game loss. Or going back further to Royko’s youth, the Cubs
acquired a colossally slow home run hitter to play one outfield position along
with another great home run hitter who was even slower; or the trade of a
future hall of fame outfielder/base stealer for a washed up pitcher. While
railing with vigor against the corruption, racism, and authoritarian rule of
the first Daley machine in Chicago, Royko followed with sorrow and despair a
baseball team that was in Steve Goodman’s words, “the doormat of the National
League.” In fact, Goodman, the author of
the powerful song about Middle America, “The City of New Orleans,” despite his
disappointed love affair with the Chicago Cubs, sang about wanting to be buried
in Wrigley Field.
Chicago’s love affair with their
failed baseball teams prompted a disagreement between Royko and his friend and
the other Chicago hero, Studs Terkel, on what the Cubs and the Chicago White
Sox stood for. Studs correctly pointed out that the Southside White Sox were
the working class team coming from a part of the city where there used to be
“stockyards and steel mills.” And in
contradistinction, Cubs fans “…are from the suburbs, brought in by big buses.
It’s like going to an air show or ‘Cats’—something tourists do.” Terkel pointed
out in his New York Times October 28,
2005 op ed essay that for attendees
at Cubs games “…it’s not about baseball. It’s about having been to a place to
be.” He goes on to compare Wrigley Field, the “hallowed” ball park, with U.S.
Cellular Field, “a dump.” The White Sox park only surpasses the Cubs venue in
its toilets, “…the cleanest I’ve ever seen in a public place.”
Royko, Terkel (and Goodman) are
Chicago heroes (in the same tradition as the Haymarket Martyrs and Lucy
Parsons). But they are both wrong. The
history of struggles, workers, women, African Americans, gays, suggest just the opposite of Royko’s despondency. In
fact, if groups of people try hard enough and long enough they can win. In Cubs
history, great stars planted the seeds of victory—Ernie Banks, Billy Williams,
Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo. They raised the possibility of victory that, while
not experienced in the short term, has to be seen as part of a historic process
that led to the 2016 season. This is even more clear as we look at the social movements of
today. Where does the passionate rejection of the reactionary politics of the
Trump campaign come from if not from past struggles? What about the Fight for
15, Black Lives Matter, and movements for climate change? Can social change ever occur if Royko’s defeatist consciousness predominates?
And although Terkel’s baseball
“class analysis" of the Cubs and Sox is historically correct, baseball like
life changes. Transformations can occur.
The Chicago Cubs have become the city’s team: for workers, men and women, and
more people of color than before. In
fact, as a metaphor, the Cubs have transcended their upper class roots. In
addition they have become a national phenomenon.
There is something about the
inspiration that traditional ‘down and outers’ in the sports world have for
most of the citizenry. Perhaps sometime in the future, progressives will look
back to 2016 and remember that an older, Democratic Socialist, Jewish
politician inspired young people to think about building a better society. And
they will remember also that the Chicago Cubs won the National League
championship and came close to or won the World Series.
