The Cubs, however , had no problem with integrating the team. In fact, by the time Green played his first game for Boston, Ernie Banks had already won 2 MVP awards ( for losing teams, of course), and The Cubs have had 3 more black players go into the Hall of fame as of this writing...Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, and more recently, Andre Dawson (who should have gone in as an Expo, but anyway). As far as fans go, however, it has been pointed out that for a team that was always pretty diverse racially, the fan make up is pretty white. Possibly because Wrigley is located in the northside of Chicago, which has a more suburban feel to it as opposed to the south side, where the White Sox play. Honestly, I've never been there, so I don't know ( and you could make the same argument about Fenway, so I'll just shut up now). Another team with a so-called "curse" are the Cleveland Indians. There was a book published in 1994 entitled "The Curse of Rocky Colavito", which blames the trade of the popular slugger to the Detroit Tigers in 1960 for the team's downfall, although it's not the same as the Babe Ruth trade, of course; The Indians had gone a dozen years without a World championship by then, and the Tigers would have to wait until 1968 for theirs, and Colavito was long gone by then. The irony of that book was that a year after it was published, the Indians won the pennant, as they would 2 years later. But enough about that, back to Chicago...
However, I believe the 2003 NLCS game against the Marlins was the most heartbreaking of all. Known now as the " Steve Bartman incident "after a fan by that name reached over to catch a ball in fair territory and prevented Moises Alou from making the catch. The fact that at least one other fan was also guilty of this act is rarely brought up. Bartman became the goat, although the real goat may have been the pitching staff which let up 8 runs after the incident, with an error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez (not to be confused with the other shortstop named "Alex Gonzalez" playing for Marlins that day ) not helping matters. They lost that game, and then the next. The anticipated Cubs/Red Sox World series was never to be. The Sox, of course would lose the 2003 ALCS to the Yankees because of Aaron bleepin' Boone, but they pulled it together the next year. Their GM of course was Theo Epstein, now with the Cubs. Can he pull it off again? If he does, then I know a certain headphone -wearing bespectacled Cubs fan who would definitely "friend" him on facebook.
Put me down for "complacent". I stopped hating the Cubs when Theo showed up.
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