VIANO COLUMN: Go Cubs Go (really)

Growing up where I come from, you don’t have a choice.

You are what your dad is so I was, am and always will be (at least until they move the team to Tampa or contract the franchise into oblivion) a White Sox fan.

And it was good for a long time, too. When I was a kid, the White Sox were the cooler, more successful and at least equally popular team in town. The Sox had Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura and “Black” Jack McDowell. They were good guys wearing black. There was a playoff run in 1993 and a division-leader in 1994 that, as every White Sox fan will tell you, would have won the World Series were it not for that season’s series-canceling player strike.

Even into the 2000s, the Sox at least seemed like the more lovable team, and they were still winning plenty, too. The Sox were gritty underdogs with stable ownership and blue-collar attitude, even non-ironically using the advertising tag line ‘grinder ball’ in 2006.

The 2005 World Series win, which snapped an 88-year drought for the franchise, is one of the best moments of my sports fandom. I was 23, just out of college, and I popped champagne and cried real tears when the final out was recorded. I called my dad that night, too, just like millions of sons and daughters around Chicagoland. It was a moment, a real, raw, moment, that I got to be a part of. It was, at the time, one of the best feelings in the world.

I’ll admit, though, that it probably felt even better because the Sox got there first.

The Cubs and their phony, fair-weather, rich, entitled, beer-guzzling, frat boy fans deserved every bit of agony and make-believe curse they suffered through, I thought back then. I enjoyed watching the Cubs implode in 2003, and I laughed when then they and their cartoon-villain owner were swept out of the playoffs in 2007 and 2008.

The thing is, I don’t have it in me anymore.

Even weirder — and, dad, don’t read this part — I’m rooting, genuinely pulling hard, for the Cubs to win the World Series this year.

What’s happened, I’m pretty sure, is that I started to find some modicum of perspective. I mean, I married a Cubs fan, which might have softened me a bit, and I have dozens of friends and extended family who are die-hard Northsiders, but that’s been that way for a long time, including back when I used to laugh at the Cubbies.

So let’s go with perspective. You know, perspective like the inability to get worked up over the outcomes of sporting events is pretty freeing, and the choice to embrace and seek out what’s beautiful has been a much healthier one than clinging to — or even searching for — something to resent.

And let’s face it, this Cubs run has been pretty dang beautiful.

Three wizards in the front office, students of the so-called sabermetric revolution who are actually far stronger judges of baseball character than they’re even given credit, lead them, and have built a roster that is somehow both supremely talented and eminently likeable. Their manager is a wine-drinking, black-rimmed glasses wearing, uber-chill innovator, and their best pitcher played at Dartmouth and rarely touches 90 miles per hour.

Then there are those enchanted fans, the ones like my wife, my in-laws and my friends, and even the drunken 20-somethings in the bleachers.

They’re having a heck of a time through all of this and why in the world would I get angry about that?

The kind of magic that engulfs a fandom, especially one as title-deprived as the Cubs, is without comparison elsewhere in sports. What’s the political equivalent, a Whig party candidate being elected President?

I’m excited to see them all celebrate, to feel the emotion a little vicariously and to experience a little of what I did 11 years ago.

I love great stories and I love honest feelings, and that’s all poised to come gushing out as early as this weekend. It will be a beautiful sight to behold.

So here it is, I’m really saying it: let’s go Cubs.

And, you know, my team got there first.

Andy Viano is a sports reporter, columnist and conflicted, die-hard White Sox fan. He can be reached at (406) 758-4446 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com.