Cubs: It's over (?)

Well, it may be over. "Why the doom and gloom, Dave?",you make ask. "Weren't you saying just last week that it's only April and that perspective must be kept when dealing with the long baseball season?" Yes - yes I was. But that was before I got wind of this:



Yeah, this is what I feared - the Cubs, or rather a Cub, new left fielder Kosume Fukudome, on the cover of Sports Illustrated. What's more, with a proclamation that the team is poised to break its century-long curse.

This is potentially bad. Way bad. This is the convergence of two major curses - the one that has hung over the Cubs for more than 60 years, and the one that dictates that if a team or player that's in contention ends up on the front of SI, disaster may be just behind the corner. Save Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and the swimsuit cover model of the year, perhaps, no one seems to be immune to eventually falling prey to this malady. And that includes the Cubs. The last time the magazine stated so prominently that the light at the end of the tunnel was forthcoming was at the beginning of the 2004 season:



Of course the Cubs didn't even make the playoffs (though they did win one more game than they did the previous year, when they were five outs away from the World Series). Speaking of 2003, Kerry Wood also made the cover after the Cubs beat Atlanta in the first round of the playoffs. But we all know how that went.

Still, there are mitigating circumstances. For one,

Emily

. (Thanks, Beth.) For another, the Cubs did make the cover last year during spring training, with Lou Piniella and Alfonso Soriano lounging on the green grass in the middle of the Arizona desert. Perhaps it was mitigated by the snarky subhead of the headline ...



... but the Cubs did go on to win their division, to the shock of many.

So maybe this isn't as cataclysmic as some Cub fans, myself included, make it out to be. And, as I did say, the season is still young. Besides - if Fukudome does lead Chicago to glory days, that Japanese phrase is going to look sweet on a blue T-shirt!

Burning Down the House (That A-Rod Built) ...

Here we go again. Tonight at Boston's Fenway Park, the eternal struggle between good and evil begins anew when the Yankees visit the Red Sox for the first time this season. The two baseball titans have played each other yearly for over 100 years - from back to a time when they weren't even known as the Yankees and the Red Sox. (Try the "Highlanders" and the "Pilgrims". Not exactly the same, is it?) Of course, the rivalry has only really become a rivalry in the past several years, when the Sox finally shook off the shackles of failure and starting giving the Evil Empire as much as they took, and those two Boston World Series rings definitely have changed the tenor of the blood feud.

And now, this: The New York Post is reporting today that the new Yankee Stadium, which is being built in the Bronx next to the current ballpark and is set to open next season, may already have "undesirable" Red Sox taint on it. Or, rather, under it. This story, which have yet to be completely confirmed, states that a construction worker on the $1.3 billion project placed a Red Sox T-shirt into the foundation of the visitor's clubhouse before the concrete was poured. According to the article, the worker wasn't meaning to place a curse on the Yankees but now fears that that may be the actual effect. And many fans of the Bronx Bombers are concerned enough to start demands that the "offending" garment be dug up asap, even though the construction is pretty far along at this point.

Stupid? Overraction? Just keep in mind that no other major sport is as driven by superstition as baseball. The curses can be epic (Bambino, Billy Goat, Bartman, etc.) or they can be miniscule, such as how, when a pitcher is throwing a no-hitter, his teammates will avoid him like the plague in the dugout; or how a player with a hot bat will not change underwear as long as he's on a hot hitting streak; or how Hall of Fame batting champ Wade Boggs ate chicken (and, at times, other things) before every game. So to place the colors of a team's most bitter rival underneath their home stadium is serious stuff indeed. And considering how angst-ridden Yankee fans already are because their squad hasn't won the Series since 2000 (shocking!), don't be surprised if there's isn't a major reclamation project at the New Stadium before it even opens.