The Cubs Fan's Guide to Happiness || TANY: there's always next year
Written: Oct 28 '07 (Updated Oct 30 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Passionate, funny; 'tough love' in the right places, light-hearted when needed.
Cons: Perhaps too focused on recent history, but there have been many easy targets recently...
The Bottom Line: If you are a Cubs fan, know a Cubs fan, pity/laugh at Cubs fans, get this one. Heck, get this home-grown Cubs tribute if you are a baseball fan period.
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| sleeper54's Full Review: George Ellis - The Cubs Fan's Guide to Happiness |
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The waning days of autumn are special to every baseball fan. The untold promise of spring—incubated through the long, hot summer, rushing toward the fruition of post-season play—has been fulfilled like a birthday wish granted ...or that promise has been dashed by excessive expectations, untoward injuries, and disappointing season-long play.
Perhaps no other baseball fan knows that latter feeling of eager anticipation followed by crushing disappointment better than does the ever-enduring, ever-suffering Chicago Cubs fan.
Co-founder and Managing Editor of the Chicago-based sports rag The Heckler (www.theheckler.com) George Ellis brings a fan's spirit, a fan's love to The Cubs Fan's Guide to Happiness. He also brings biting wit and cynicism, fueled by years of being lured to the green of Wrigley Field, taken in by the untested promise of a new year, and tendering undying love of all things Cubs ...even when he knows where the ride will surely end.
In a short 70-some pages Ellis compresses the frustration of 100 years of failing to win a World Series into several short chapters that make unblinkingly clear how silly this assignation at the corner of Clark and Addison really is.
But even as he explains the concept of using the bumper sticker phrase 'There's Always Next Year' as a mental crutch for the pain of once again losing in the most ignoble way . . .even then the true Cubs fan knows s/he will never renounce their allegiance to, their love of, their team.
No matter how screwed up the club's business operation is, no matter how much the beer or the bleacher seats cost, no matter how powerful the omens (a goat named Murphy, banned from the 1945 World Series game or a black cat at Shea Stadium during a 1969 Cubs/Mets game) that dictate their fortunes, no matter how inescapable the truth of the won-loss record, no matter all that . . .at least you are not a White Sox fan. Yeah, that is a minor theme running through the book.
These chapters reinforce the ideas of "the power of low expectations" and the concept that "beer will make it better." These may sound like life-affirming laws you already practice. But Ellis grounds them in one hundred years of Cubs fandom and forges them into a credo that will carry you through the next one hundred years of abject Cubs failure. And perhaps even your next 'business failure' at work.
By page count, the Fan's Guide is really more appendices than 'guide', these additional 100-plus pages carry much of the weight, and the information, of this tome. They include a summary of the "15 Habits of Highly Happy Cubs Fans" (note: 'happy' _not_ 'successful') which the author explains can help make you . . .'a lovable loser' in real life also. Gee, there is something to strive for, ehh..??
Brief recaps of the "100 Years, 100 Frustrations" carried in the collective soul of Cubs fans everywhere are also featured.
These are not happy thoughts to recall. Accounts of trades and release document the many players that moved on to immediate and long-term success elsewhere: Lou Brock(1964), Bruce Sutter(1982), Dennis Eckersley(1987), Greg Maddux(1992), Mark Grace(2000), and Dontrelle Willis(2003) to name a few.
Thoughts about disappointing players abound: Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Orie, Mel Rojas, Ernie Broglio, LaTroy Hawkins; as do disappointing business decisions: selling naming rights to create the 'Bud Light Bleachers'; firing ball girl Marla Collins after she posed for Playboy; Jeff Gordon, Ozzy Osbourne, and Mike Ditka all butchering the seventh-inning stretch singing gig; the Precious Moments giveaways; the 'Believe' bracelets in 2005; and many more.
The Bottom Line
The cross of being a Cubs fan is not one taken up lightly. Often passed from grandfather to son to grandson, each willingly embraces the journey while realizing they may wander the desert for many years, probably never reaching the promised land.
But take heart Cubs fan: "beer will make it better" and "there's always next year."
Other 'Baseball and diamond dust' reviews by sleeper54
Certified 'lean-n-mean' review.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sleeper54
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Location: "Is this Heaven?"......"No. It's Iowa."
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About Me:
Off to Dallas for real-world 'work' training.
Will be back ASAP..!!
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