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Three Fates and Yer Out!

By James Finn Garner

As ten decades of failure concluded
(The odds against which—mighty steep!),
The Three Fates sat in the Wrigley bleachers,
One last great appointment to keep.

There Clotho with distant expression
Spun thread from her distaff with ease,
The flaxen content of life in her hands,
Her scorecard spread over her knees.

Her sister Lachesis sat by her
To measure each thread to its length,
Her face a smear of SPF 50
As the sun beat down in its strength.

Lastly, Atropos, peddler of doom,
Whose shears sever man’s vital thread,
Was letting the line pile up at her feet
And glassily staring ahead.

What could cause the Fates’ dereliction,
Prolonging the Cubs’ misery?
What forces conspire to cruelly delay
The end of this sad century?

Beside the gals sat die-hard Bacchus,
With grapes twined in his Cubs visor.
“You can’t leave now—we can still score some runs!
Hey Beer Man—bring four more Budweisers!”

Posted 9/12/08

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Bad Culture

by Sid Yiddish

If you please, I’d like some goat cheese, to dispel the myth, from spring to fall
I’d like nothing better than to watch the Cubs capture it all, but one can’t be too sure,
For the milk has to be pure and not tainted with so much
Bad culture,
And bad culture is 100 years of rotten ills,
Makes the old men drink hard liquor and swallow pills to forget about all that bitterness in between.
Ha!
Like 2008 is going to set anyone straight!
It’s just another great debate and besides, it’s now mid-summer and the slide has slowly begun,
Which, when all is said and done, will lead them nowhere but to empty banter on Opening Day, 2009.

Posted 9/4/08

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Them Versus Dem

by Sid Yiddish
Well, the Sox fans hate the Cubs fans,
And the Cubs fans hate the Sox fans,
Yet, both teams are doing so very well.
So why, why do the fans give each other hell?
It couldn’t be a Northside versus Southside stigma, now could it?

Still, let’s get one thing straight:
There are vital differences between them,

And it all boils down to this…

White collar versus blue collar,
Upper management versus the union,
Family versus The Family,
Particular versus pride,
The SUV versus the family van,
Pencil-neck versus redneck,
The prize trophy wife versus the missus,
The hunks versus the hits,
The stunts versus the stats,
The goat versus the gut.

But it’s the Sox fans who can take the heat, versus the Cub fans who will try to sell you the entire kitchen.

Posted 8/11/08 

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Your Baseball Days

By Stuart Shea

When was the last time you ran barefoot in the grass?
When was the last time you even threw a baseball?

Roll your fingers over the seams.
Try a fingertip knuckleball.
Pound your glove.

Think of your baseball days, before OPS and Direct TV
When you’d play all day until the sun went down
And even then you’d switch to ‘running bases,’ tossing the ball under the misty summer lamplight.
While other kids ran
And millions of bugs headed toward the bright.
And when everyone goes in for the night,
See if the Cubs game is still on.

They’re in Pittsburgh, blowing another lead in the ninth.
Jack Brickhouse is moaning. The bullpen crumbles.
And when it’s all over, and you’re exhausted with frustration
At Dave LaRoche and Oscar Zamora,
You realize there’s another game tomorrow, both for you and the big boys.

You knew NOTHING of the world at 12. But you knew baseball, and that’s what counted.
The game was an escape, a separate world with its own set of rules, a prism through which to look at your existence.
Organized rules, hope, glory, sunshine, and action.
Nothing like your own, seemingly arbitrary, life.
Which is why you needed it.

You’ll always need it to bring you back to joy, to freedom, to your own self.
For that skinny 12-year-old just begging for acceptance, begging to just be good enough at something.
And the game gave you hope.
So turn off the TV, the computer, the instant updates on your device
And play catch.
Just play catch.

It’s nice.

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The Wave Land, Part II

by Thomas Dyja

While the Chicago Cubs are enjoying a terrific year in 2008, for generations they have embodied dashed hopes and weary resignation. To honor those Cub fans of the last century who perished without seeing their team in the World Series, we present this elegy set in the 1980s from award-winning novelist Thomas Dyja.

II. A Game (More or Less)

The bench we sat on, like a worn out bar,
Peeled in the bleachers, where the scoreboard,
Held up by standards wrought of Gary steel, and
From which a pale scorekeeper peeped out
(Another hid his paunch behind the clock)
Posted the score of seven games—Candlestick
Reflecting the time upon the coast—as
The zeroes next to “Cubs” rose to meet defeat
From Cardinal runs poured in rich profusion.
…yet there Jack Brickhouse
Filled all the TV’s with inviolable voice
And still he cried, and still the outfielders pursued,
“Hey Hey” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were set in their green seats; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, jeering the team below.
Footsteps shuffled on the basepaths.
Over DeJesus, far to his left, Mitterwald’s throws
Spread out in fiery points
Rolled into centerfield, then would be savagely booed.

“The Baron is bad today. Yes, bad. Stay with the pitch!
“Hit to left. Why can’t Murcer hit to left? Hit.
“What’s Wallis waiting for? Why’s he taking? Why?
“I’ll never know why they always take. Swing!

Joe thinks we need a late rally
But I just want to go home.

“What is the score?”
The Cubs are down by four.
“What is the score now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.

“Can’t
“They hit anything? Can’t they field anything? Do you remember
“ ’69?”

I remember
Cardenal’s eyelids stuck to his eyes.
“Can you play, or not? Is it something Lockman said?”
But
O O O O Clines overslid the bag—
Tried for too many
A win for Denny
“What shall we do now? What shall we do?”
“We shall go out for a beef, and have a beer
“With our heads down low. What shall we do to-morrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
The game starts at one-thirty.
And if it rains, a pass at the door.
And we shall see a game, more or less,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for the Cubs to maybe score.

Posted 7/16/08