Are you weeping blue tears? Are you in deep mourning? Are you forever heartbroken?
These are just a few of the melodramatic overreactions I heard from die-hard Chicago Cubs fans after news broke that the team traded away its most beloved players: Anthony Rizzo to the Yankees, Kris Bryant to the Giants, and Javier Baez to the Mets, among other unpopular trades.
“I feel like I’ve lost something very near and dear to my heart,” Sherry S. said. “I’m so, so sad, I loved these guys.”
“Rizzo and Bryant are big losses. No one will fill their ‘mitts,'” Lori J. said.
“I’m in mourning and have lowered my W flag to half-staff,” Pam G. said.
I understand the fans’ instinctive feelings of disappointment, but … but …
“But relax Cubs fans, you didn’t lose a kidney or a parent. Just a few favorite professional athletes from your favorite baseball team. They will be just fine. And so will you,” I wrote on social media when those trades were announced.
Most Cub fans wanted nothing to do with my nonchalant, unsympathetic reaction to their “loss.” You’d think they actually did just lose a sibling, a vital organ or even their wallet.
“I’m not going to be just fine,” Cindy J. told me.
“I don’t want to feel fine,” Pam G. added.
“This is devastating to me! And to our team!” Thomas L. screamed on my Facebook page.
Really? Really?! Puh-lease.
Trades are part of professional sports. Heck, some longtime Cub fans are still “heartbroken” and “devastated” about Lou Brock getting traded to the Cardinals in 1964. The team moved on. And Brock moved out (before eventually stealing his way into the MLB Hall of Fame). Those fans he left behind in Chicago? They were just fine.
“It’s not about being fine or not fine. It’s deeper than that,” said Tommy Throw (no kidding), a lifelong Cubs fan from Chesterton.
“We have limited amount of disposable time to dedicate to a pastime, hobby, or favorite sports team in this case. We emotionally dedicate ourselves to the ones we love, our hobbies, and in many cases, our favorite sports team,” Throw said.
“It’s a reprieve from our daily exhausted lives to come home and catch a game of a team we have loved for decades, if we even have the time with our demanding nightly responsibilities, especially with children,” said Throw, who said he has attended more than 300 Cubs games.
“When beloved players are traded — players who have made a positive impact to their fans, our community and our youth hopefuls — it affects us all,” he said. “We are not talking about players who are boastful or showoffs or negative. We are speaking of professional athletes that have played a positive role with our youth, just like anyone in our community or in our lives.”
The former Marine, a father of three who still plays adult baseball, seamlessly articulated the feelings of millions of Cub fans. Nonetheless, today’s column isn’t merely a contrarian viewpoint against their heartfelt reaction. This is honestly how I feel about the latest Cubs’ trades, and about pro sports team trades in general. It’s just business.
Major League Baseball — as well as the NFL, NHL and NBA — is first and foremost a profit-demanding business. To think otherwise is to be fanatically delusional. Owners don’t care about your feelings, only about your loyalty to their team, specifically by you spending money on what they’re selling — tickets, concession stand items, merchandise, and so on.
As Jimmy Dugan (played by Tom Hanks) exclaimed in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own”: “There’s no crying in baseball!”
There’s also no room for lingering sentimentality, as Chicago Tribune sports columnist Paul Sullivan wrote regarding this topic.
“Some things never change,” he reminded readers about previously unpopular Cubs trades.
Billy Williams. Fergie Jenkins. Ron Santo. Glenn Beckert. Randy Hundley. These legendary players from the ill-fated yet still-fabled 1969 team were all traded away at some point. It was the end of an era. I remember it like it was yesteryear. I was a young die-hard fan who lived and died with every game and with every player. I still have wrinkled baseball cards of those former Cubs players hanging in my garage. I was crushed when they were traded from the team.
“Sometimes it’s over, just like that, and all that’s left are the memories,” Sullivan wrote.
Less emotional Cub fans took a more analytical approach to the controversial trades of Rizzo, Bryant and Baez, who were considered the holy trinity from the 2016 World Series team.
Bob Webster, a Michigan City native who lives in Portland, Oregon, immediately analyzed the trades by comparing what the team lost versus what it could gain: “Mets get Javier Baez and Trevor Williams, Cubs get Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Met’s 2020 first-round pick. He has a really accurate arm with a quick release. Has a chance to become an elite-level center fielder.”
The Cubs also traded for Alexander Canario, Calen Kilian, Kevin Alcantara, Alexander Vizcaino, Nick Madrigal and Codi Heuer. Who? Huh? What?
“I am looking forward to seeing Niko Hoerner at short and Madrigal at second for a few years,” Webster said.
Most Cub fans aren’t ready for the on-deck circle about Webster’s optimistic attitude and future projections.
“The Cubs won’t be fine and neither will I,” Mary R. said. “I don’t believe you, Jerry.”
“Obviously you’re not a die-hard CUBS FAN!” Robin S. said. “It’s like losing a close friend. It’s heartbreaking. We’re sad. It’s going to take a while.”
OK, I understand. This is how I felt in the early 1970s when the team traded away my heart for … prospects.
Then again, I was only a preteenager. In time, I was fine.
Today’s fans will be fine, too.
