Curses, foiled again.

I'm not an overly superstitious person. I am not afraid of black cats, I have no problem opening an umbrella indoors, I will freely walk under any ladder I see, and I have no fear of Friday the thirteenth or the number 13 for that matter. I also do not believe in curses. Curses are just someone's way to explain bad luck, when bad luck is just simply life. That is the rational way to feel, superstitions are just a load of humbug.

Now, when it comes to watching sports, I have many different and irrational feelings. Feelings such as being able to control a game by what I do while watching said game. Feeling as though I can help my team win a game or the opposing team lose a game. For example: I believe that when commercials come on during a game in which my team is playing, that whether I stay on that channel or flip through the stations during the break, it will somehow help or hurt my team. I do not know which it will do until I try. Things like that seem irrational now, but in the heat of a game, you will do anything possible to help your interests.

As I mentioned earlier, I do not believe in curses. Curses to me always bring to mind the image of a witch standing over a bubbling cauldron or Snidley Whiplash, for those of you who are Dudley Do-Right fans. After the Red Sox won the World Series I thought that that was definitive proof there were no such things as curses. I believed that until a few days ago. I was checking out a ballgame on TV, enjoying my holiday weekend. What team was I watching? Well, the Chicago Cubs of course.

The Chicago Cubs, two words that cannot be used together without thinking of curses. The Cubs have not won a World Series championship since 1908, the longest drought for any team in baseball. The Billy Goat Curse is said to be the reason for this run of luck. The Billy Goat Curse is the most famous of curses in the sporting world. Apparently during a 1945 Chicago Cubs World Series game a man was ejected from Wrigley Field. Why I’m sure he must have done something to deserve this, and he did. This jackass was planning to share this playoff experience with his beloved billy goat. I don't have to tell you that the Wrigley Field officials didn't like the idea, so they kicked him and his goat out. That man then proceeded to curse the Cubs. He claimed that the Cubs would never win the World Series again. That is a pretty good steak of bad luck, if curses do not exist.

As I said I did not believe in curses, until that fateful day when I was enjoying a Cubs game. The Cubs best pitcher and what some Cubs fans deem the baseball savior, Mark Prior was pitching against the lowly Colorado Rockies. He was motoring along until he caught a comebacker. A comebacker is a ball that is hit right back at the pitcher, and I mean right back at the pitcher. Did I mention he caught this sharply hit ball with his elbow? Well, he did. He fractured his elbow and is now on the disabled list. I am not a Cubs fan per se, but I have watched the Cubs struggle and flail as if they were the castaways on Gilligan's Island. The castaways would figure out a way to escape the island only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and remain until they eventually had to turn to cannibalism to survive. Or something like that. Anyway the Cubs are the same way. Every year they think they have a shot at the playoffs and every year their raft seems to sink.

Possibly the last best shot they had to destroy the curse was in 2003 when they had the best pitching staff in the National League and a great hitting team and were just 5 outs away from the World Series. Some might say that is the exact time that the curse came into play and cost them that chance at the World Series in the bespectacled, geeky form of Steve Bartman. Bartman was the guy who interfered in what some say was a catchable foul ball by knocking the ball away form Moises Alou and thus ending the Cubs hopes for a championship and Bartman’s chance at living a stress free life. Of course it had to be the curse, right? It couldn’t have been that the Cubs went into a total defensive collapse after that play, no, it had to be a curse.

And that is how I felt until I saw Prior rolling around on the ground clutching his elbow. He was a true life picture of all the Cubs woes. He was motoring along, pitching a great game and then something that couldn’t happen again in a hundred chances happens. The Cubs have lost Sammy Sosa, they have lost Kerry Wood and Mark Prior for extended amounts of time this year, and if not for Derrick Lee, they wouldn’t score more than 2 runs a game. The Cubs are horrible even when they should be contenders; the Cubs have no chance, even when they look like the best team in baseball. They always seem to find someway to sink their raft.

The real sad thing about all this is that the fans used to love the Cubs as losers, they didn’t care if they won the World Series or not. The Cubs fans were just happy to be at the ballpark and were happy to be able to enjoy baseball, win or lose. Now that the Cubs have got the stink of contention on them over these last few seasons, what used to be lovable has now become loathed. The Cubs are now being booed and doom and gloom has taken a much bigger grip on the city of Chicago. I did not believe in curses until just recently, but in Chicago, it has been a way of life for 60 years and it doesn’t appear to be lifting anytime soon.