“People ask me a lot about the values I got from playing (there) for so many years. The value I got out of it was patience. A lot of people these days are not very patient.”
— Ernie Banks
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Many of my best baseball friends – maybe most of my real baseball friends – are fans of that team from the north side of Chicago that once upon a time hadn’t won a World Series since the last time William Jennings Bryan was on the ballot.
These fans are true fans. There is not a sunshine patriot among them. They have never folded their tents nor tucked away their loyalty when the harsh winds of autumn turn brown the ivy on that outfield wall. They solider on through winter with warm anticipation for another spring when again, hope becomes eternal.
They smile when reminded of goats and geeky guys wearing headphones. They laugh at ‘wait until next year’. They have their favorites: Santo, Banks, Williams, Sandberg, Fergie or Zim. They can remember the first time and every time they crowded into that old cathedral at 1060 W. Addison. Many of my best baseball friends are in a way, spiritual. They accept with Grace that when it was meant to be, it will be.
Many of my best baseball friends have known only the wait and the expectation and the hope of a series. Their mom’s and dad’s or granddad’s knew the wait, too. They’ve been close a few times only to see the favorites blow it or jinx it or kick it away. But they never give up. Other fans come and go. Those other fans can’t remember the right fielder is this year or they have ceased to care if the bullpen is thin. Other fans have other teams and hopes and disappointments and victories. Many of my best baseball friends have just kept the faith long past when they had reason to do so.
As the late, great Bartlett Giamatti, once our commissioner and still our bard, wrote of baseball fans: “Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.”
Many of my best baseball friends never grew out of sports. They were not the tough among us devoid of illusion, just the loyal, the hopeful, the determined among us. They were tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. And now – this day – they have finally found that perfect green field, in the sun.
For years and years and years they will remember the bottom of the 10th, in Cleveland, in November when all the best friends cried and hugged and lived that experience they have always known would happen – someday.
Someday is today.
Cubs Win! Cubs Win!