— President Obama (@POTUS) October 14, 2015
Wow. I can't believe a Chicagoan isn't thrilled about the Cubs. Once your favorite team is eliminated, don't you just lock on to a post-season team to love? We've adopted the Cubs from up here in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin normally regards Chicago as the enemy. By "we," I mean, Meade and me. I haven't talked to everyone. I have heard at least one person say that the Cubs winning is shaking up his world. The Cubs are supposed to be ever the losers. I'd thought, that's why it's so cool when they win at long last. (Did you notice the sign in the crowd last night that read "Party like it's 1908?" (1908 was the last time the Cubs won the World Series.)) But apparently some people want the Cubs to retain their lovable-loser vibe. It's a theme in the music of the Midwest.
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In the old days, the World Series would be done by now. It seems like it's been playoffs forever already.
They win today so it will hurt more when they lose tomorrow
There is something about a streak like that--it gives a team a sort of aura. I recall when the Red Sox had their streak, it sort of defined the team--so many close calls! The longtime hope and frustration of Red Sox fans (and their hatred of the Yankees, who for so long kept their team from winning the division and kept taking their best players) was what made them special. Once they broke their streak, they became just another team.
As an Oriole fan, I sort of like that we arent' that good--keeps game tickets available, and the fair weather fans away. Though this season was pretty lousy.
Condemnining with faint praise is an Obama special talent. He uses it on Hillary too.
I remember hearing an interview with Obama and White Sox radio broadcasters, I believe, who asked him for his favorite White Sox players from when he was younger. He couldn't name one. He's even a phony White Sox fan.
must...complain...about...everything...he...says.
No, I disagree. Angels fans aren't rooting for the Dodgers. Yankees fans aren't rooting for the Mets. Obama's tweeted support for the Cubs, however half hearted, is just bland, vanilla pandering from a Chicago politician.
Not sure why a Brewers fan like you would adopt the Cubs, a division rival. Isn't Meade a Cardinals fan? Cubs-Cards is one of the most bitter rivalries in baseball.
"Tom said...
I remember hearing an interview with Obama and White Sox radio broadcasters, I believe, who asked him for his favorite White Sox players from when he was younger. He couldn't name one. He's even a phony White Sox fan."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX0PSoCTFas
He also called Comiskey Park COMINSKI.
I've been a Cubs fan for 50 years now, and this team is special. Starting four rookies. Not sure if they will win it all this year, but it's been fun watching it unfold.
Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer are geniuses. Joe Maddon too.
I was kind of surprised that tweet was even tepidly nice when I saw it last night. I had convinced myself that President Obama would wait to see if the Cubs would win the championship to say anything, and that even then it would be something snarky like, "what took you so long."
You might wonder why I'd think such a thing; why would such a politician gratuitously insult fans of a popular franchise just because he a fan of one of their rivals? Well I wondered that same thing when this story came out during his first presidential election:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/51514-obama-white-sox-fan-cub-fans-not-serious.
I felt kind of ambivalent about Obama at the time, but this story convinced me that above all he was a man who dealt in shibboleths and straw men. The "bu- bu- but Cubs fans aren't *serious*" has been a trope among Sox fans (to excuse the Sox's relative lack of popularity) for decades. The fact that Barack Obama appears to take it seriously enough to repeat it to a reporter should tell you everything you need to know about the man.
"You might wonder why I'd think such a thing; why would such a politician gratuitously insult fans of a popular franchise just because he a fan of one of their rivals?"
You consider 2 teams in the same city in 2 different leagues to be rivals? I don't get that. NY never felt like that about the Yankees and the Mets, at least that's not how I remember it, living there in the 70s and 80s. People bonded with one team, I think, but that didn't make them against the other. I guess the league separation isn't what it once was. I'm old. I don't like any interleague play in the regular season.
"I've been a Cubs fan for 50 years now..."
You must be so happy!
Hat's off to the Cub fans! Normally, they are to the St Louis Cardinals what the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters.
Reverse the curse!
I want the Cubs to win the World Series this year just because of "Back to the Future II".
For those who don't know - In that 1989 movie, Marty McFly travels through time to late October 2015, and learns that the Cubs have just won the World Series.
Ann Althouse: I don't like any interleague play in the regular season.
Agreed.
"BDNYC said...
Not sure why a Brewers fan like you would adopt the Cubs, a division rival. Isn't Meade a Cardinals fan? Cubs-Cards is one of the most bitter rivalries in baseball."
Meade's from Cincy. Lot's of Wisconsin Cub fans, especially in Milwaukee. Milwaukee didn't have a team between the Braves and Brewers so they became Cub fans.
I sincerely doubt your Brewers fandom if you are actively rooting for the Cubs.
You don't see me cheering on the Royals.
"You consider 2 teams in the same city in 2 different leagues to be rivals? I don't get that. NY never felt like that about the Yankees and the Mets, at least that's not how I remember it, living there in the 70s and 80s. People bonded with one team, I think, but that didn't make them against the other. I guess the league separation isn't what it once was. I'm old. I don't like any interleague play in the regular season."
Growing up in the NY area (before interleague play) I can say that Yankee and Met fans did actually see each other as rivals, even though the only way they'd ever get in each other's way would be if they met in the World Series. I agree it doesn't make sense--Yankee fans should be far more hateful towards the Red Socks, and Met fans should be far more hateful towards the Phillies--but it's how they feel. I'd suggest it's because they feel they are competing for the affections of the locals, or want to be the "best" in their city.
"I sincerely doubt your Brewers fandom if you are actively rooting for the Cubs."
People usually have some story as to why they root for certain teams that aren't really their home town teams. A friend of mine growing up was a Yankees and Jets fan (an odd combo, as usually Jet fans are Met fans, Yankee fans are Giant fans) and the reason was his dad grew up in the Bronx so was a natural Yankee fan, but hated the Giants because their football games would ruin the field at Yankee stadium, so he rooted for their crosstown rivals by default--and the son adopted the father's preferences.
I started rooting for the Ravens long before moving to Baltimore because I lived in D.C. for a while, grew to hate the Redskins (due to Dan Snyder being Dan Snyder) so started rooting for the next closest team.
"Lot's of Wisconsin Cub fans, especially in Milwaukee. Milwaukee didn't have a team between the Braves and Brewers so they became Cub fans."
Growing up in Milwaukee, this. Also, the '82 World Series.
I grew up a Dodgers fan but moved to Chicago and left it to my son to choose a team -- he picked the White Sox. Thank goodness. The first game I took him to when he was 4 years old was at Wrigley, and by the 6th inning I was the only person in my section who wasn't drunk and wasn't shouting obscenities at the top of his/her lungs. My poor son told me later he didn't like that park because everyone was very mean (from a 4 year old perspective). I also was asked about 10 times what I was doing with that sheet of paper: Answer: Keeping score. Question: How do you do that? Answer: It is too hard to explain to someone who has been drinking (said with a smile).
An Uber driver yesterday, in answer to the question "Are you a Cubs fan or a White Sox fan?" told us: "I'm a Chicago fan." OK -- I'm a Chicago fan, and I am happy for the Cubs (but in spite of their fans).
Brando – Once they (Red Sox) broke their streak, they became just another team.
So true. I’ve been a Sox fan since the early 60’s. Back then, fans were mad dog rabid. Media coverage was savage and brutal. Each spring, the previous failures were forgiven and they grew in stature. In the 90’s I went to a Boys & Girls Club fund raiser that featured Bernie Carbo. He didn’t look sober and was a terrible speaker. Everybody was overjoyed to shake his hand. Carbo, a career journeyman, was a Red Sox legend for a single at bat in 75 World Series. I doubt anybody remembers him today.
Today, the Red Sox own the Boston Globe and a TV channel. No criticism allowed. Cloying sweet coverage, pink hats and Wally the Green Monster - bleah. It’s probably time for the Cubs to shed the lovable loser, but they will miss it when it’s gone.
They're still playing baseball? Mon Dieu!
Also, the '82 World Series
Robin Yount! Molly! Jimmy Gantner! Rollie Fingers. Stormin' Gorman. Harvey's Wallbangers.
That was a team.
"JBrando – Once they (Red Sox) broke their streak, they became just another team."
I was living in Maine at the time they ended the streak, and also that year the Patriots went undefeated only to lose in the Super Bowl. When the latter happened I told the other people at the party that the bright side was that while some other team may someday go undefeated and win a Super Bowl, there's no chance another team will go undefeated and lose one, so the Patriots will always have that.
That didn't console them.
"That didn't console them."
Pats fans are insufferable.
Also, the '82 World Series.
The enemy of my enemy is - in this case - still my enemy.
Go Dodgers!
Go Mets!
Go (whoever makes it out of the AL)!
The Pats went undefeated in 2007. The Red Sox broke the curse in 2004, although they did win iit all in 2007, too.
South Side Sox fans don't root for the Cubs. Obama is being diplomatic here. North Side Cubs fans don't root for the White Sox. Mets fans can't stand the Yankees. Michigan fans don't cheer for Ohio State. Etcetera.
The Cubs have a good team this year and the Sox were bad. They went 3-3 against the Cubs this year, which is unacceptable.
I'm still waiting for the Cubs to build a statue of Sammy Sosa outside Wrigley Field and invite him to throw out the first pitch in a playoff game. But the Cubs pretend that steroid freak didn't carry their franchise for more than a decade. And they blame some poor fan for losing the 2003 NLCS instead of their team having an epic meltdown. They and their fan base are full of shit.
While I like many of their players, I'm hoping they lose. They don't deserve a World Series. One of Obama's few redeeming qualities is he's a Sox fan.
"Not sure why a Brewers fan like you would adopt the Cubs, a division rival. Isn't Meade a Cardinals fan? Cubs-Cards is one of the most bitter rivalries in baseball."
I just think the National League Central Division is the greatest division of all time. I'll be for whichever team wins this division.
I'm a North Side kid born and raised, and I've been a Cubs fan virtually since the day I was born in August 1950, so I'm delirious with joy and excitement.
Now I live in a southwest suburb and I hang out in the still-Irish neighborhoods on the South Side (Beverly, Bridgeport, Canaryville, Mt. Greenwood), but even so I'm still a Cubs fan.
Back in the 50s when we were free range kids and allowed to roam far and wide my parents and the parents of my friends would give us a few bucks to take the El down to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old when I first started taking the El with friends to Cub games. No adult supervision. Fancy that!
In the summer of 1969 I worked in Evanston on the Northwestern University Buildings and Grounds crew and every day while trimming the hedges and mowing the grass and such we listened to the Cubs games on transistor radios. What an exciting time that was. Then came September when the first-place Cubs couldn't win a game and the Mets couldn't lose. O, sorrow!
Remember, Cub fans, when that black cat jumped out onto the field and walked in front of Ron Santo? OMG.
Looking back now on the 1969 Cubs, I just have to laugh.
My south side friends give me lots of grief for being a Cubs fan. I respond by asking them what a White Sox fan does now that their season is over. Answers:
1. They brush their tooth.
2. They visit the mother in prison.
3. They spend more time watching their wives peforming at the strip clubs in Gary.
4. They actually go to Hawthorne Racecourse to bet on the horses instead of calling their local bookies while sitting at home in their boxer undershorts and wife-beater tee shirts getting blind drunk at 9 in the morning.
Chicagoans here will understand.
Go Cubs!
Althouse, I was in Chicago last weekend for the Chicago Marathon and worked alongside White Sox fans. They were anti-Cubs and were happy when the Cubs lost on Friday night.
Normal fan behavior. Meade will back me up on this.
No true Southsider/White Sox fan would admit to rooting for the Cubs. No true Southsider/White Sox fan would WANT to root for the Cubs.
Northsider/Cub fans don't care what Southsiders think. They just want the Southsiders to meet with their probation officers on schedule and perform their court-mandated community service.
Cubs - Marlins.. Good times... good times.
I will be rooting for them though. Them and Toronto. It would be cool to have a Great Lakes series.
Althouse is a fan like I am. Not a die hard fan, but I like the sport. In football I root for any team in the AFC East that has a chance. Buffalo, New England, I even have a dim memory of the boys in green doing something back in the foggy past. Dolphins? LOL.
@Brando -
As a Mets fan who has lived in NYC for 30 years, I would say that the relationship btwn Mets fans and Yankees fans is more of a sibling rivalry, with the Yankees being the older, bigger brother. Yankees fans definitely do not see the Mets or their fans as "rivals" in the traditional sense, since the Yanks are older and far, far more successful (the most successful team in American sports history, in fact). Basically, any scattered Mets success is responded to by Yankees fans with a condescending, disinterested "count the rings".
I'm Mets/Giants myself which, as you say, goes against type. I like to think of it as preserving my psychic equilibrium. Yanks/Giants people are insufferable assholes. Mets/Jets people are depressed pretty much all the time. I suppose Yanks/Jets would be the other side of my coin, but who cares, because fuck the Yankees.
"I'm Mets/Giants myself which, as you say, goes against type. I like to think of it as preserving my psychic equilibrium. Yanks/Giants people are insufferable assholes. Mets/Jets people are depressed pretty much all the time. I suppose Yanks/Jets would be the other side of my coin, but who cares, because fuck the Yankees."
I used to think the Mets/Jets fans were mostly people from Brooklyn/Queens and Long Island, as Shea was closer to attend games than Yankee Stadium was, and Yankee/Giant fans were more prevalent in Jersey and Westchester (where I grew up) for the opposite reason (as well as Brooklynites picking the Mets because they used to be Dodger fans and would not migrate to the Yankees). But there can be more at play, especially when people see a lot more sports on TV than live (particularly with football--I've probably been to at most three or four NFL games in my life) and it can come down to hating the cocky team that wins a lot or developing a love for certain star players or coaches. My hatred of the Redskins is based on Snyder's suckitude, and love of the Ravens based on proximity (which is silly, considering it's not like I can afford to attend those games).
I do find Patriot fans humorless--if you don't believe me, tease them about cheating and see whether they shrug it off or explain to you point by point that Goodell set them up, everyone else cheats, and Brady is a football god.
William Ligue and son, typical Southsider/White Sox fans ... on one of their better days.
By "better" I mean not being passed out, stuperously drunk, in mid-afternoon at the bar of some Canaryville dive.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/big-league-stew/10-years-since-william-ligue-son-attacked-tom-172223277--mlb.html
I keed, I keed ...
I for one am a Yankee fan who is rooting for the Mets. Combination of reasons:
1) It's not really a rivalry - 27 rings to 2, different leagues, met only one time when it mattered and we slaughtered them - like the old Islanders and Rangers had ("Potvin Sucks" is still chanted at MSG).
2) The Mets are really fun, with all their young stud pitchers and the newbie, Cespedes creating havoc. And they've always had a kind of Cubs lovable losers vibe going on...
3) I love NY and love it when we beat a California team or a Philadelphia team, and especially when the Cali team has a bunch of old Phillies as villains.
4) I have a bunch of nieces and nephews who have stuck with the Mets and the Jets during the crappy times when all their cousins and uncles were gloating about the Giants and Yankees winning and winning and winning. And at every Christmas when the 10 year olds would get a David Wright jersey or a Mark Sanchez (ha ha) jersey all the uncles would tease them and say, why not join a winning team and end your misery. So yeah, for all my loyal nieces and nephews, GO METS!!!
- a republican yankee in the heart of ny.
For those who don't know - In that 1989 movie, Marty McFly travels through time to late October 2015, and learns that the Cubs have just won the World Series.
I forgot about this! I think if the Cubs even make it to the World Series, Joe Maddon will never have to buy anything in that city again.
@Althouse, in case you haven't noticed Chicago is not New York City, and makes no bones about it.
If you're from the south side, you root for the White Sox. If you're from the north side, you root for the Cubs. The alliteration (South = Sox) should help you remember that.
People who are not born and bred in Chicago don't have the history which makes the whole Cubs/Sox thing so intense. I like to joke that I am the offspring of a mixed marriage - my father a Cubs fan and my mother a Sox fan. They grew up less than a mile apart... but on opposite sides of Madison (when that was the true dividing line).
I am a Cubs fan from a multi-generational Cubs fan family. My grandfather was a fan, my father was a fan who lived a long life without ever seeing them win. I grew up with my father taking me to watch games in what I still believe to be the best seats in the whole park (along the 1st base line just under the overhang so there is some shade/protection from rain).
I am now at the holding my breath phase of things. Do not get too excited... it might jinx us!
When the Sox won I was happy for my friends who are sox fans... but I wasn't personally happy. A few life long Sox fans actually *appreciated* that I didn't bandwagon.
It's great for the city when either team wins... but great for the nation when the Cubs win!
They grew up less than a mile apart... but on opposite sides of Madison (when that was the true dividing line).
Scientific fact: When you cross Madison going from north to south, your IQ drops 20 points.
To Roughcast: "I'm made of rubber, you're made of glue . . ." But congratulations for getting out from the smug, "trendy" North Side to where the real Americans [sic] live. I will refrain from further, probably bigoted, comments about Cubs fans.
I grew up in West Englewood on the South Side, where much of my extended family also lived, but nobody in my humongous family lives in the city any more (my sister in Norridge and her wife (probably not the right term but, whatever) come the closest), but most of my closest relatives are now in the southwest suburbs where the former residents of much of the South Side ended up, for reasons we don't need to get into. Part of the heartland of White Sox fans.
Despite being a Chicago ex-pat for almost 45 years (and living less than half a mile from Fenway Park for most of that time, which raises other issues), and despite the fact that I stopped caring about professional sports decades ago, I concur with the comments here by the "born and bred" Chicagoans. No White Sox fan (including me) wants the Cubbies to win.
Irrational tribalism for the win!
--gpm
P.S. I went to high school about a block a way from Nate's (since taken over by Al's), but Spalla's in Natick has a more than passable version of Italian beef.
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