Dear Cardinals Fan

I jumped off the Clark bus at 10:45 the other night just outside Wrigley. I still had two stops to go, but I wanted soak up some memories on this night. The last night of baseball for the year...

You'll have to forgive me, but this whole thing feels like Deja Vu. A year ago to the day I flew into Chicago for a relaxing homecoming (my first visit back since I moved to San Francisco), a G Love concert at the Vic, a Bears game, a Halloween party. The dear friends I have greeting me with a beer toss and hugs that felt long overdue. Everything is right in the world of Donny. Except for the very real fact that the White Sox just blazed a historic run through the playoffs for their first World Series since 1917. To be honest, I didn't really care THAT MUCH. I mean, I've got good friends, good baseball men, who are Southside supporters so I was happy for those guys. I'm conditioned to dislike everything White Sox, but before they won it all, I had no real opinion. I didn't like them. I didn't hate them. I nothing-ed them.

So I land at Midway on October 27, 2005 with my Cubs hat on and my I-Pod ready with the Chicago playlist. I jump on the "L", send text messages to the appropriate parties and let "Sweet Home, Chicago" wash over me. As we approach downtown it occurs to me... There are seven Sox hats in this traincar alone and only one Cubs hat, which is on my head. Completely understandable. They just won it all, I mean, I know what's happening all over the Southside... "Kids, you're staying at your grandparents house tonight. Honey, put a nice dress on, the Sox just swept the Astros, we're getting drive-thru and doing it twice!" That's one thing, but these people on the train who were giving me smug looks were doing so beneath brand spanking new lids. Brims still rigid, nary a speck of wear and tear. I smiled to myself, tucked this little observation into the fold in my brain labeled "amusing" and rode on. Little did I know, this was a harbinger of things to come.

Flash forward one year. I'm sitting around with the same good friends, watching the Cards in a deciding game, wondering out loud if I should go with the Chris Farley coconuts-and-hula skirt Superfan or the more traditional George Wendt Mug-and-Stache Superfan for Halloween. At this point, White Sox fans are pretty much the most miserable people in the world with only a few notable and distinguished exceptions. Sports-talk radio callers have, as a population, become 30 IQ points dimmer in the past year. What ever happened to the Five-Year Grace period? They just won the World Series, and yet, as if possessed, Sox fans froth at the mouth with venom about their players. They, overnight, have become a force on the Chicago scene and it stinks of fearweatherism. Also, I don't understand how anyone can pull for A.J. Pierzynski, I'm sorry, I just can't.

Cardinals Fan, I fear our relationship is doomed to the same fate. Whenever we play and the place is packed with both fan bases, it's always fun. I circle that series on my calendar. It's a lasting institution on the baseball landscape, this rivalry, and I've always thought that mutual ground made things right. An old lady, dripping red from head to toe, keeping score at Wrigley during her annual pilgrimage to Chicago. A father, wearing Sandberg, and a son, wearing Lee, skipping work and school to see Opening Day. The learned fanaticism and devotion creating something exquisitely engaging. That is, until you went and won it all with your worst team in years. I've managed to befriend a Cardinals fan or two in my travels and I know they're out there... But I have the feeling this is going to get ugly soon. I mean, I get "Cubs Suck". That's standard fare, hell, even though they just won, Cardinals Suck. What lies ahead though will be a gradual change from healthy smacktalk to insufferable posturing. Impromptu and impossibly lame renditions of "We are the Champions" out at bars. A further proliferation of played-out stereotypes and tired anti-Cubs websites (Seriously, didn't we grow out of those weak "you're gay" jokes in grade school? Guess not.) will become more and more in vouge. I can't even fathom how the national media will run with this either. I'm just saying there has never been a time I can remember that being a Cubs fan is such a chore because of the other man's obsession with this thing called a curse. What a shitshow.

Ok, time for Da Bears.