The agony of Cubs fans

It would be hypocritical for me to congratulate the San Francisco Giants on their World Series win: I have never been a sports fan, much less a baseball fan, much less than that a Giants fan. I paid just enough attention to them in my youth to conclude they were a cursed team that would not win a Series in my lifetime. (For the long-suffering true fans out there, I'm delighted to have been proven wrong.)

Still, much in life is relative. That was brought home to me when I scraped acquaintance with a native Chicagoan some years ago. This fellow seemed aged beyond his tender years. One spring day I learned why, when he admitted he was a die-hard Cubs fan. (All Cubs fans are die-hard, by the way.) I didn't know of the Cubs' history (see "never been a sports fan," above), so I cavalierly advanced my hypothesis of the cursed Giants. The Chicagoan, regarding me with polite but unmistakable scorn, was silent for a moment. Then he launched into a description of what a real curse is.

Time has washed my friend's exact words from my memory, but I found their echo in the comments on a New Yorker column by Roger Angell (thanks to John Gruber's Daring Fireball for the pointer). A fellow with the handle "patrickmarren" elegantly set out the history that weighs on the Cubs fan's head:

I am truly happy for the Giants and their fans. But I inhabit an unimaginably more torturous circle of baseball hell: I am a Cub fan. The scar tissue has scar tissue. We have not been IN a World Series in 65 years, 9 years longer than the Giants' World Series VICTORY drought. We have not WON a World Series since man first trod the North or South Poles. We have not won since the human voice first was carried by radio. We have not won since 90% of the world's population was ruled by one of seven emperors. We have not won since both Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy were alive and writing books. We have not won since the first Model T was two weeks old. We have not won since the year the Sultan was deposed. Remember how, allegedly, in old folks' homes around New England, codgers clung to life so they could witness another Red Sox championship in 2004, causing a drop in mortality before the clincher and a spike right afterwards? That could not happen in Chicago. Because all those who witnessed the last Cubs championship first-hand, on October 14, 1908, are already dead.

Now that's a curse.