Those Poor Cubbies!

With their 5-1 home loss to the Diamondbacks tonight, the Cubs were swept out of the 2007 playoffs. What that means, in a historical sense, is that they, and their fans, are now the very unhappy owners of a century-long championship drought (officially only 99 years at the moment, but since the earliest they could end it now is next October, it's going to reach 100... at least!) Let's just consider that for a moment.

To appreciate how big that is, mull this over: there probably aren't any people alive on the Earth today who can remember the Cubs winning a World Series. After all, for that statement not to be true, a person still living today would have had to have been old enough in 1908 to be cognizant of that year's baseball championship (which probably rules out kids of four years old or less?), in addition to having enough of their faculties still working today to be able to recall that period from their childhood, at the ripe old age of 106 or whatever. Seems quite unlikely to me, and every successive playoff year makes the odds even longer.

Another depressing way to look at it is this: over that span since 1908, how many young Cubs fans have come to love the team, spent the rest of their childhood and their entire adult life in the thrall of the Northsiders in the Windy City, only to die of natural causes without ever seeing a championship? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? There's undoubtedly a story that goes with each and every one of those broken hearts.

I also can't help but think of the abuse heaped upon New York Rangers fans - and the franchise itself - leading up to 1994, and that was a 'mere' 54 year slump, at its peak. What must it be like to have futility almost twice that long hanging over your head every day? Crushing, I suspect. Join me now in observing a moment of silence for the Chicago Cubs, their fans and anyone else who's ever suffered along with them over the past 99 years.