When a century-old curse finally gets lifted, it’s hard not to look for whatever other curse might be lurking beneath. At least, that’s what a die-hard Cubs fan does.
I asked at the dinner table the other night: “So what if this is it for the Cubs, forever and ever, amen?”
My wife flashed a “Don’t encourage him” glance to our daughter Jenny, a look that is no match for my “Force Field of Stubborn Musings.”
But Jenny took the bait. “What do you mean?” she asked. My wife flashed her a “Don’t You Ever Learn?” look, but our daughter has force fields of her own.
Well, I explained, which kind of team would you prefer: A club that’s the perennial doormat of the National League, and then one year wins it all only to return to the doormat for another few decades? Or a club that wins a hundred games season after season and reaches the playoffs year after year, but never rides down Michigan Avenue with confetti raining down on the trophy?
My wife thrust her thumb high in the air and beamed a smile at it. She’d take the trophy, even if it’s only once in a lifetime.
Jenny wanted to know the conditions of the contract before she was willing to sign on the dotted line. “Well, how long are we talking about here? Another century?”
I agreed it might be a stretch to ask a fan to wait until some future reincarnation to see the team hoist the trophy. Let’s say a decade or two.
My wife’s thumb shot into the air again, because she’s an I-want-the-trophy girl to the core. (“Which is why she chose to marry me,” I would have said, but my Anti-Snarky-Look Force Field has only so much power.)
I clarified the conditions of the hypothetical hidden curse: “If you choose the trophy, you’re opting to win it all one year, and then be monumentally lousy year after year for another generation or so.”
My wife’s thumb shot up. Of course.
“Or, as the alternative, your team flies the big blue W over the park day after day during the regular season, keeps playing deep into October and maybe even November, and you get to watch that beautiful green ivy on the brick walls turn orange and gold before it’s all over. Year after year.”
“But no trophy? Ever?”
“Never. Just a whole season of winning pointless games, year after year, before the hammer falls at The Big Show.”
My wife’s thumb jabbed at the tabletop. She scowled at that option.
“I’m with her,” Jenny said. “What’s the point of playing if you’re not playing to win?”
I spun off into a tangent-tale about a week-long fishing trip I once took with a friend. (My wife gave Jenny her “See, I told you not to encourage him” look, but my force field was strong.)
The fish were biting that week, I explained. At least they were biting for everyone else in camp, because in the evening we could smell the succulent aroma of deep-fried walleyes wafting from every other cabin, while Glen and I burned frozen burgers in the skillet.
But Glen longed for a trophy smallmouth bass, and he would settle for nothing less. And because we were fishing from Glen’s boat, that meant we would only fish on deeper rock piles where trophy bass hung out—or where they would have hung out, if they had been hungry. They weren’t.
Meanwhile, smallmouth bass of a pound or two roiled the shallows, gulping down minnows, crayfish, insects, fallen twigs—anything opaque in the water. Glen refused to take us within casting range.
Walleyes attacked anything that swam through a pass between two small islands, and fishermen were filling their limit in minutes. But eating-size walleyes are not trophy smallmouth bass, so Glen scorned any fisherman who would yield to a temptation like that.
“So if you were a fisherman,” I said, winding up my tangent, “which would you be? Would you rather catch a lot of smaller fish all day long, or would you rather fish all week long without catching anything, but then haul in a trophy?”
My wife holstered her thumb for this question, perhaps fearing to give me the go-ahead to plaster some cold-blooded beast on the wall where the pictures of the grandkids used to hang.
“Did Glen ever catch his trophy?” Jenny asked.
“Well, no. But even if he had, which would you call the more successful fishing trip: A hundred fish of modest size day after day, or just one giant fish after a week of pounding the water?” And then I found another tangent: “If you were a musician, would you rather be Jimmy Buffet, who enjoys a long career singing good songs but never had a #1 hit record, or would you rather be Norman Greenbaum?”
“Norman who?”
“Exactly. I rest my case.”
Jenny shrugged. “I want to see the team win it all every now and then,” she said. “Even if they suck for years after that.”
My wife’s thumb shot into the air.
“But,” I persisted, “isn’t it possible to love the process more than the product? Can’t a millionaire love his work more than the fortune the work brings him?”
“I’d love the lottery,” Jenny said.
Thumbs up from the wife.
And that was that, because who wants to leave the dinner table with the taste of philosophy lingering on the palate? We cleared away the dirty dishes and dumped them in the dishwasher, like ancient curses to be cleansed.
But the question remains: Which kind of person are you? “Always close but no cigar?” Or “Perennial tramps, then suddenly champs?”
You might try serving the question at the dinner table tonight.
Or, if you think your force field is up to the challenge, save it for Thanksgiving.
