Chicago is cursed, but fans already know that. It is what the Cubs are cursed by that might surprise them.
By Blake Dowson
Cubs fans, I really thought this was the year.
Oh, how Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Addison Russell have developed. And the pitching staff, they look like they wouldn’t mind throwing in November. We have Theo, the perfect manager, and the perfect blend of veterans and youngsters.
Not to mention the trade to get Aroldis Chapman, maybe the most dominant reliever in the game.
But I’m sorry to say, Chicago faithful, that the Cubs are doomed from ever winning the World Series. And it’s all thanks to the city’s greatest champion — His Airness, the Jumpman himself, Michael Jordan.
Stick with me.
Because first, a history brush-up is necessary for those who have chosen to block 1945 from their memories.
Billy Sianis, the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, attended Game 4 of the 1945 World Series between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers with his pet goat. Sianis was asked to leave the game because other fans in attendance complained the goat smelled.
Sianis, infuriated, sputtered that, “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” Well, he turned out to be right — the Cubs haven’t been back to the Fall Classic since. If time travel were possible, I would go back to Oct 6, 1945, and stick 5-cent hot dogs in the noses of every person in attendance of that game.
But alas, the CIA hasn’t admitted it has the capability to do that yet, so we as Cub fans have had to live with this goat curse.
(MJ comes into this, I promise.)
There have been attempts to get rid of the curse, of course. Sianis’ son has been brought to Wrigley Field on numerous occasions with a goat to try to reverse it. Didn’t work. Cubs fans took a goat to a game in Houston and weren’t allowed admission. Didn’t work. Somebody butchered a goat and hung it from the Harry Caray statue. That one didn’t stand a chance.
With all of this effort going toward reversing the curse, it’s so infuriating to me that we, as Cubs fans and Chicago sports fans in general, have just been strengthening the curse the whole time.
One of the most common debates in sports — and particularly the NBA with guys such as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James having all-time careers — is who the greatest player of all-time is.
Twitter loves the debate. Twitter is also lazy. These two things, combined with Michael Jordan (I seriously promise), are why the Cubs will never win the World Series.
It truly is a useless debate with players from different eras being compared, but West Coast tweeters will say Bryant (or Magic, or Kareem) was the greatest of all time. Then, people in Cleveland or Boston, in an effort to conserve tweet space, will explain why LeBron or Bill Russell or Larry Bird is the greatest of all-time.)
And then the people in Chicago, holding close to their hearts the idea that Jordan is the greatest player of all-time, and he’s widely regarded as such, aim to end the debate by not saying anything at all but simply placing an emoji next to his name.
And what emoji would that be? You bet. A goddamn goat.
As an article in the Washington Post points out, the goat emoji has evolved into a symbol for success. So isn’t it just fitting, and equally dooming, that the 21st-century sign for success, championships, and everything that comes with it, is the same animal the Cubs kicked out of the stadium during their last World Series appearance, 71 years ago?
As Twitter debates almost always go, one cannot earn the goat emoji without winning a championship. But the Cubs can’t win a championship with the goat still haunting them.
The two can’t coexist, and for that reason, Jordan being seen as the greatest goat is crushing the Cubs’ dreams, just as he did to the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, cementing his legacy as such.