Home sweet home

Home sweet home
Originally uploaded by Butch Wynegar.

Despite the Cubs' recently superpar (not to say excellent, or even successful) performance, on Wednesday we watched them lose 15-5: just like old times, and an especially fitting reintroduction to Wrigley, where I had not seen a game for 16 years. Not surprisingly, it looked exacctly the same, which is to say beautiful. Fans turned out in surprising force for a midweek day game, and were in characteristically good spirits throughout. I don't want to take issue with JW's championing of Yankees fans, because, in his way, he's right: Yankee fans are far more into the game than Cub fans. At times it felt like we stumbled into a 30,000-person party taking place near a baseball game.

But Yankees fans manage to suck all the fun out of winning: they are so spoiled, so intolerant of failure -- and most of baseball is failure, as any .300 hitter can tell you -- so mean-spirited, noisy, violent, and sour (JW not included) that they make attending a baseball game just as stressful and trying as anything else in New York. I suppose Red Sox fans would be the natural analogue for us (Cub fans), but they seem tortured by their losses in a way that we're not: when they chant "Yankees Suck", they put an alarming amount of their heart and soul into it: they seem defined by their hatred of the Yankees. Cub fans, on the other hand, are the best-natured fans in the league. Sure, this means we've endured a dry century, but we also take off work and get to go to Wrigley Field -- WRIGLEY FIELD -- to watch the boys play, and then hang out in Chicago afterward. Winning would just be gilding the lily.