The Cubs Are Playing Baseball Today

Moon rising over Wrigley Field earlier this summer.

"The one constant through all the years Ray has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again, but baseball has marked the time. This field, this game is a part of our past Ray. It reminds us of all once was good and could be again."-James Earl Jones as Terence Mann in "Field of Dreams."

This post has nothing to do with the markets or investing so if that's what you're looking for then you can leave right now.  

The Chicago Cubs begin their quest for baseball immortality tonight as they begin the National League Playoffs.  Unlike last year when the Cubs sort of snuck up on the baseball world, this team was expected to do well from the beginning.  So far they haven't disappointed, winning 103 games and the National League Central crown.  All of that though is now in the past.  Forward lies the possibility of glory and for Cubs fans the adventure of their lifetime.    All of us Cubs fans and I suspect most Chicagoans are now along for the ride.

Baseball is a game that starts with the promise of spring and ends for one team with an autumn crown.  Every April hope arises in all fans of the sport, but perhaps no more so than those that call the corner of Addison and Sheffield Avenues home turf.  Most years for Cubs fans those hopes are dashed usually before the kids go back to school.  But sometimes something like this season happens and you just have to sit back and savor the experience.  The Cubs finally winning the World Series in a year like this would be one for the ages.  With apologies to all White Sox fans {who won a World Series in 2005}, it would likely be the greatest Chicago sports story in the 30 years I've lived here.  The Cubs have a larger national fan base than the  Sox and a more glorious history of losing.  Yes I use the word glorious because you only have to consider their past to understand that comment.  If you don't know what I mean then go look it up.

To be a Cubs fan right now is to gaze hopefully in to that promised future while staring down the revenants of that glorious but ghastly past.  You right now want so much to believe but you are haunted by past failures.  How it will end is anybody's guess but as long as the Cubs continue to play baseball this year they will have Chicago's undivided attention.  Including mine.  

Next post here will be Tuesday.  Markets are semi-open Monday, Columbus Day but I have a slate of meetings that day and will mostly be out of the office.  

And if you have any magic potions or ju-ju juice that you wouldn't mind offering up to the baseball gods in favor of our Cubbies then I'd be much obliged, as would millions of people around here.

Eamus Catuli Baby!