If you thought Cubs fans were vulnerable and needy before, it’s going to be much worse this year, because Next Year is This Year.
Almost every baseball expert is predicting that the Cubs will roll through the National League with something like 97 or more wins (or maybe 146 wins and everybody — even the bat boys — makes the All-Star team.) And then they win the World Series after a century of pain.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it puts more pressure on Cubs fans than they’re able to handle.
And it’s only a matter of time before someone grabs some chalk and writes “Cardinals 2016” on the sidewalks of Wrigleyville.
That will drive Cubs fans batpoop crazy, like the students at Emory University in Atlanta who had panic attacks after someone wrote “Trump 2016” on campus sidewalks.
The poor, sheltered, entitled students freaked out and demanded that their deans protect them from the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Now here are reports that pro-Trump chalk has been spotted on other college campuses.
It’s being called “The Chalkening,” and one of the best tweets I’ve seen involved a mom who said she’d just bought chalk for her kids, so she was probably in commission of a hate crime.
Well, it might be funny to some people when others roll on the floor and scream like babies, but that’s politics.
And this is baseball. There’s no screaming like babies in baseball. Cubs manager Joe Maddon can’t stick pacifiers in the mouths of Cubs Nation.
So to prevent a Chalkening II, I’m asking Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago City Council to officially designate Wrigleyville a “Safe Space.”
It’s been done at many public universities and it seems to work: No negative thoughts may be spoken that might challenge the assumptions of the sensitive and protected, no matter how stupid those assumptions might be.
And as far as chalk goes, anyone caught with chalk on the North Side writing “Cardinals 2016” or “The Giants are Peepul 2” will be immediately thrown into the pokey until after the playoffs.
Just call the mayor and ask that Cubs fans be given a Safe Space and protection from a summer of bad juju.
Of course, all the Cubs fans must do their part as well, including my two brothers, my friend Mary Ellen, many of my crazy cousins and a tough Irish guy named Pat who loves the Cubs and just got out of the hospital and doesn’t need the stress:
Just stop listening to sports talk radio in the afternoon and evening.
Cubs fans may listen in the morning, especially to “Mully and Hanley,” since they don’t go out of their way to bait the vulnerable among you.
But there are others who shall go nameless here who may find it all too tempting to hide that shiv in the velvety voice of reason, while making mythological references like “That bunt sprang fully formed from Maddon’s forehead,” or “How can Rizzo score from second without winged feet?”
By August, CFIFP (Cubs Fans Involuntary Fetal Positioning) will set in among the listening audience, and half of Chicago and much of the northern suburbs will be rolling on the ground, curled up, shrieking and doing the silent cry.
To protect yourselves from CFIFP, watch the games at the ballpark or on TV, or listen on the radio and then immediately turn the dang thing off and try to pretend that you have a life and then go live it.
Bring your wife or girlfriend some flowers. Play catch with your kids. Watch political TV talk to soothe your nerves or write a “Game of Thrones” blog. Grow tomatoes. Become an expert at something besides video games. Ask your husband or boyfriend to share his anxious Cubs feelings, or better yet, just fry him a steak.
But live that life because all summer waits. So make it a good one.
Baseball is supposedly full of superstitions, so this might sound heretical, but the baseball gods don’t care two figs what you do.
The gods don’t care if Cubs fans run blue threads through their socks or through their nostrils. They won’t be moved if you wash your hands with dirt like Ron Santo, or if you find Don Young and buy him dinner.
They won’t care if you make a necklace of Michael Barrett’s broken teeth from the Zambrano fight and post it on Facebook.
Nor will they care if you somehow collect the chin hairs of George Will, cup them in your hands and light them ablaze while saying the words “Hee-Seop Choi” in the voice of Harry Caray in a darkroom.
There is just nothing you can do. The Cubs have a great young team. Even we Sox fans can see it.
So let them play baseball and quit freaking and whining. Just leave them be and enjoy the games.
Find that Safe Space, Cubs fans. It’s a long season. Just keep your eye on the sidewalk.
And beware of a chalkening.
Listen to “The Chicago Way,“ radio-free Chicago in podcast form with John Kass and Jeff Carlin.
Twitter @John_Kass
