"The Houston faithful left, perhaps the most disillusioned baseball fans in the world. Except for maybe those of the Cubs." -- Mike Lopresti, Gannett News, concluding the U.S.A. Today story on Game 4 of the World Series.
The immediate question is whether Lopresti is ignorant of baseball fans or ignorant of English. Of course, the glaring sentence fragment might provide a clue.
Making fun of Cubs fans is always easy sport, but they are not disillusioned. Maybe Lopresti intended to say delusional.
Cubs fans deserve a World Series team. Cubs fans sustain hope despite Biblical setbacks (See the Steve Bartman piece elsewhere on this website). Cubs fans forgive and support. They put up with Sammy Sosa well past his ability to help the team. They tolerated and even idolized Harry Carray long after he lost the ability to enunciate. Whether any manager ever deserves to be fired is debatable, but the Cubs always have a reasonable case to make against an outgoing manager.
Cubs fans are many of the qualities Astros fans are not.
The Astros have a lot to answer for: plastic grass, any number of uniform embarrassments, Gordy Pladson, broken bat home runs into left field seats that would seem claustrophobic to Little League batters, Milo Hamilton, George Bush, and Chester Charge.
The Houston Astros, in the entire franchise history, have won seven division championships. Four of those came during one five-year period, the five-year tenure of one manager, Larry Dierker. The team forced him to resign.
Sammy Sosa had to not show up for work before the Cubs would run him off.
Houston's former third baseman, Phil "E-5" Garner, managed a team of has-beens and rookies to the World Series in 2005. The team probably won't fire him for at least three more years.
I hope Lopresti is right. Stripped of the illusions, Houston fans might become real students of the game. As for the Cubs fans, they're back in familiar territory, tied for first-place from now until April.
--Jeff Cox, would-be baseball commissioner, Oct. 27, 2005
Posted by Jeff Cox, would-be commissioner
at 1:32 PM CST
