Batter Up!

Today is opening day for the 2009 major league baseball season, and my Cubs are in Houston for a game tonight. The White Sox have already postponed their opening day game with Kansas City until tomorrow; US Cellular field being covered in a blanket of snow.
In my last post I mentioned my high school Physics teacher who I saw for the first time in 25 years a few weekends ago. The good sister is, and always was, a diehard Cub fan. In the spring, when the season was just beginning, class would stop every afternoon at 1:20 if the Cubs were playing. We would be given a work sheet and watch the game in her classroom. She had a 10 inch black and white TV, and if the game was away we listened on the radio. This was not wasted time, as she would plan our work around the baseball schedule. Teaching took place when there was no game, or the Cubs were out of town and playing at night; seat work was planned for game day. The year I had Physics was just after the Cubs collapse of 1969. Even though they had disappointed her so, she would still watch every day.
I was a Cub fan myself long before I took Physics. When I was very young, my mother would watch the Cubs on TV while she did the ironing. When she was a young woman during WWII, my mother worked in downtown Chicago. Occasionally, her boss would take all the office girls to a Cubs game as a moral boost and she became a Cubs fan as a result. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Cubs have ruined every one of my summers for the last 50 years. I have given up any hope of seeing them in a World Series before I die.
This year’s team is touted as a powerhouse who is sure to win the division and contend for the title. What a pile of crap! The only thing the 2009 Cubs are sure to do is ruin another summer for me. They are as soft as the over-ripe tomatoes will be in my garden in August. I still watch, but not as much as I used to. My friend in the Theology Department is a Cubs fan as well. We both agree that we will not ever get excited about another Cubs season again until they are playing in the 4th game of the World Series. The last two years she watched every minute of the playoffs. Mercifully, the pain was brief. I on the other hand, I refused to waste my time watching them lose and found more rewarding ways to spend my time.