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| What the Cubs Could Teach the President | What the Cubs Could Teach the President |
| (2 days later) | |
| We wouldn’t be in this mess if Donald Trump were a Cubs fan. | We wouldn’t be in this mess if Donald Trump were a Cubs fan. |
| Think about it. We’ve seen lots of pictures of Mr. Trump playing sports. We’ve seen him on the first hole of a country club golf course, squeezed into khakis, the swing and violent follow-through, but golf, though it might not make you a bad person, won’t make you good. It depends entirely too much on honesty, thus serving as a perfect home for a certain kind of mulligan-taking con man. | |
| We’ve also seen him playing tennis, and woe, it was an unpleasant sight — the white shorts, though giant, not giant enough, underwear-line as visible as the sun’s corona at the moment of full eclipse. And tennis, with its intersecting lines and angles, its aristocratic air and money green surface, will make you a bad person. | We’ve also seen him playing tennis, and woe, it was an unpleasant sight — the white shorts, though giant, not giant enough, underwear-line as visible as the sun’s corona at the moment of full eclipse. And tennis, with its intersecting lines and angles, its aristocratic air and money green surface, will make you a bad person. |
| I don’t know how closely Mr. Trump even follows baseball, but if he does, he’s probably a Yankees fan — because that franchise, with its pinstripes and nonstop talk of winning, is Donald Trump all over. It’s good for fans but bad for humans, as it teaches the wrong lessons. What we want for a president is a person who grew up in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, learning humility and loss, the fleeting nature of glory. | I don’t know how closely Mr. Trump even follows baseball, but if he does, he’s probably a Yankees fan — because that franchise, with its pinstripes and nonstop talk of winning, is Donald Trump all over. It’s good for fans but bad for humans, as it teaches the wrong lessons. What we want for a president is a person who grew up in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, learning humility and loss, the fleeting nature of glory. |
| Though the Cubs have clinched the National League Central and are poised to make another playoff run, our character, that old Cubs thing, has not gone away. We are what happened to us, and what happened to us was decades of losing. The team won the World Series in 1908 and did not win it again until last fall. Generations came of age in the 107 years in between, grew up, grew old and were still waiting when they died. The dry spell was said to result from a curse placed on the team by the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, and we did feel cursed, but blessed too. | Though the Cubs have clinched the National League Central and are poised to make another playoff run, our character, that old Cubs thing, has not gone away. We are what happened to us, and what happened to us was decades of losing. The team won the World Series in 1908 and did not win it again until last fall. Generations came of age in the 107 years in between, grew up, grew old and were still waiting when they died. The dry spell was said to result from a curse placed on the team by the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, and we did feel cursed, but blessed too. |
| The wilderness formed our character, turned us into the sort of fans who make the best of a bad afternoon. Even now, with the championship so close behind us, I find myself wondering just how the wheels will come off this time. A Cubs fan will always be a kind of Buddhist. She knows how to enjoy a typical August afternoon, as for her there is hardly ever such a thing as October — only here and now. | The wilderness formed our character, turned us into the sort of fans who make the best of a bad afternoon. Even now, with the championship so close behind us, I find myself wondering just how the wheels will come off this time. A Cubs fan will always be a kind of Buddhist. She knows how to enjoy a typical August afternoon, as for her there is hardly ever such a thing as October — only here and now. |
| My father is from New York. I grew up in Chicagoland. Heading home from a Cubs game in 1976, he said: “I want you to make a promise. I want you to promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. I’m a Yankees fan,” he explained. “I expect to win. A Cubs fan expects to lose — he spends half his life looking for a reason to lose. He comes to believe that losing is the natural condition of life, that all human endeavor ends in ruin. He will have a bad existence.” | My father is from New York. I grew up in Chicagoland. Heading home from a Cubs game in 1976, he said: “I want you to make a promise. I want you to promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. I’m a Yankees fan,” he explained. “I expect to win. A Cubs fan expects to lose — he spends half his life looking for a reason to lose. He comes to believe that losing is the natural condition of life, that all human endeavor ends in ruin. He will have a bad existence.” |
| My father was right, and wrong. A Cubs fan does accept and even cherish loss. He understands that winning is overrated, even unreal — that there is no need to get back to Eden because we’ve been in Eden all along. In short, just about every quality that makes Mr. Trump a nightmare in governance could be cured by a few summers at Wrigley. | My father was right, and wrong. A Cubs fan does accept and even cherish loss. He understands that winning is overrated, even unreal — that there is no need to get back to Eden because we’ve been in Eden all along. In short, just about every quality that makes Mr. Trump a nightmare in governance could be cured by a few summers at Wrigley. |
| Hubris: This is Mr. Trump in a word. He needs to tell us that his fingers are not only normal in length but exceptional; that he is the best and strongest, a kind of sun god who, if you cross him, can rain down fire. But a Cubs fan knows all such talk is idle, because we are all cursed and history is nothing but a catalog of sure things that failed. | Hubris: This is Mr. Trump in a word. He needs to tell us that his fingers are not only normal in length but exceptional; that he is the best and strongest, a kind of sun god who, if you cross him, can rain down fire. But a Cubs fan knows all such talk is idle, because we are all cursed and history is nothing but a catalog of sure things that failed. |
| Fixation on the short term: Mr. Trump is not a deliberate thinker. If Kim Jong-un says he’s going to shoot a missile at Guam, then doesn’t, Mr. Trump declares victory, even if, all the while, Mr. Kim is building a doomsday laser in his mountain lair. A Cubs fan takes the long view, having learned to think in hundred-year increments — the length between championships. We know time is glacial, that things are moving deep beneath the surface. As the Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse said, “Everyone is entitled to a bad century.” | Fixation on the short term: Mr. Trump is not a deliberate thinker. If Kim Jong-un says he’s going to shoot a missile at Guam, then doesn’t, Mr. Trump declares victory, even if, all the while, Mr. Kim is building a doomsday laser in his mountain lair. A Cubs fan takes the long view, having learned to think in hundred-year increments — the length between championships. We know time is glacial, that things are moving deep beneath the surface. As the Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse said, “Everyone is entitled to a bad century.” |
| No sense of history: Mr. Trump is a man who seems to believe he just might run into Frederick Douglass on the lecture circuit. A Cubs fan would never make such a mistake — he is all about history, his team being little more than stories, characters, mystical events. He can tell you about Three Finger Brown, whose right hand yielded never-to-be replicated, nearly-impossible-to-hit curve balls; about the seizures that the pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, ruined by World War I, suffered on the mound; about the collapse of the ’69 team foreshadowed by the appearance of a black cat one night at Shea Stadium. A Cubs fan knows history is repetition and return, that those who forget it are condemned to repeat it but, even scarier, that those who remember it are also condemned to repeat it. | No sense of history: Mr. Trump is a man who seems to believe he just might run into Frederick Douglass on the lecture circuit. A Cubs fan would never make such a mistake — he is all about history, his team being little more than stories, characters, mystical events. He can tell you about Three Finger Brown, whose right hand yielded never-to-be replicated, nearly-impossible-to-hit curve balls; about the seizures that the pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, ruined by World War I, suffered on the mound; about the collapse of the ’69 team foreshadowed by the appearance of a black cat one night at Shea Stadium. A Cubs fan knows history is repetition and return, that those who forget it are condemned to repeat it but, even scarier, that those who remember it are also condemned to repeat it. |
| American greatness: Mr. Trump wants to make America Great Again, but does not understand what made it great in the first place. He harkens back to an older America, when most of the leading figures were a single shade, which seems to echo the past of the game, but is a lie. A Cubs fan knows that Chicago, more than any other pro team, was responsible for establishing the color line that existed in the game from August 1883, when Cap Anson, the Cubs player-manager and their first great star, refused to let his team appear on the same field as a black player until April 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He knows that racism is the original sin of the game, and how a hateful thing can take many lifetimes to live down. | American greatness: Mr. Trump wants to make America Great Again, but does not understand what made it great in the first place. He harkens back to an older America, when most of the leading figures were a single shade, which seems to echo the past of the game, but is a lie. A Cubs fan knows that Chicago, more than any other pro team, was responsible for establishing the color line that existed in the game from August 1883, when Cap Anson, the Cubs player-manager and their first great star, refused to let his team appear on the same field as a black player until April 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He knows that racism is the original sin of the game, and how a hateful thing can take many lifetimes to live down. |
| Obsession with winning: It’s a big problem for Mr. Trump. The Cubs would have cured him of this affliction. That’s what 107 years in the wilderness will do. It made being a fan of this team special. Wearing a Cubs hat told the world you were holier, not obsessed with victory, having escaped the wheel of profit and loss — your kingdom was not of this world. | Obsession with winning: It’s a big problem for Mr. Trump. The Cubs would have cured him of this affliction. That’s what 107 years in the wilderness will do. It made being a fan of this team special. Wearing a Cubs hat told the world you were holier, not obsessed with victory, having escaped the wheel of profit and loss — your kingdom was not of this world. |
| Some say these qualities will be lost now that the Cubs are champions, swapped for more mundane excellence; that we have nothing left to teach. But that’s not true. Our character was formed a million summers ago, in the caldron of the game’s first afternoons and on the innumerable afternoons that followed. We will never forget the most important lesson: Victory is fleeting; how you play and the respect you show the other players is all that remains when the flags come down. | Some say these qualities will be lost now that the Cubs are champions, swapped for more mundane excellence; that we have nothing left to teach. But that’s not true. Our character was formed a million summers ago, in the caldron of the game’s first afternoons and on the innumerable afternoons that followed. We will never forget the most important lesson: Victory is fleeting; how you play and the respect you show the other players is all that remains when the flags come down. |
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