CHICAGO (AP) -The old man looked as if he had a half-century on the young guy who was yelling in the men’s room at Wrigley Field about how the Cubs would bounce back from the 0-2 hole they’d dug for themselves.
“How old are you, kid?” Rick Kaempfer recalls hearing the older man ask. The reply: “Twenty-five.”
“He just sighed and walked out,” said Kaempfer, whose Web site, justonebadcentury.com – with a logo of a crying Cub – suggests his own views about the younger man’s optimism.
As quietly as a sigh, Cubs fans face the prospect that a team they let themselves believe would end a centurylong drought is instead about to end the season like every one for longer than anyone can remember: watching some other team win the World Series.
“Put away your dreams, everyone,” Al Yellon wrote on his Web site, bleedcubbieblue, after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cubs in Game 2 of their best-of-five series.
there was something special about this Cubs team that made him believe they could go all the way.
In fact, winning it all did appear to be a dream about to come true – even to fans who have long resisted the temptation to believe.
“Because of the 100-year thing, it just felt like it was destiny,” Kaempfer said. “I know it sounds stupid.”
After the game, a 10-3 loss that included four errors by four different Cub infielders, Kaempfer didn’t feel like sharing his thoughts with his readers about what he’d seen.
“I couldn’t bring myself to write anything,” he said Friday. “I was crushed. I really was.”
So was Yellon. He also wondered if the 100 years of futility – which pushes its way into conversations, newspaper articles and television broadcasts whenever the subject is the Cubs – may have weighed on the players themselves.
“It’s very possible that these guys put too much (pressure) on themselves,” he said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some fans in Wrigleyville continued to believe the Cubs could do in Los Angeles this weekend what the Dodgers did to the Cubs on Wednesday and Thursday.
was trying to catch.
“Now it’s ‘This stinks, let’s go get two in a row”’ in Los Angeles, she said.
Sounding a lot like Yogi Berra, Szczudlo added, “I just feel that it’s not over until it’s over, and it’s been many, many years since we actually felt that way.”
And, Cubs fans being Cubs fans, all this talk is sprinkled with words that show they understand exactly what they are suggesting.
“Do I believe in miracles? Absolutely,” said Bernie Hansen, a former alderman whose ward included the neighborhood around Wrigley Field, as he ate lunch at a nearby restaurant.
Sean Keegan, a fan sporting a Cubs hat and jersey, said he found the last couple days depressing, but “I haven’t lost faith, though.”
That is what makes the Cubs special. And even those who see this year as a lost cause will, by the beginning of next year, be thinking about their first World Series in 101 years.
“True Cubs fans will always believe,” said Steve Rhodes, whose Chicago-oriented Web site, The Beachwood Reporter, has poked fun at the seemingly endless supply of optimism that Cubs fans possess.
“This is what it’s always meant to be a Cubs fan – to have our hopes and dreams be crushed every year,” Rhodes said. “That’s the deal.”
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Associated Press Writer Karen Hawkins contributed to this report.
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