Why the Chicago Cubs?
I owe it all to cable TV and WGN. If not for either of those two my days as a baseball fan would have been most likely spent with my boyhood allegiance – the Cincinnati Reds. I admit in my innocence I got caught in the wheels of the Big Red Machine. Who couldn’t? It was the days of Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Pete Rose. Jim Merritt and a load of mostly has-been pitchers who somehow found the right stuff for those one or two seasons. It was Merritt who uttered one of the greatest Zen-like lines in the history of, not just baseball, but sport. When asked about his approach to the game, he replied, “No cartwheels in victory. No tears in defeat.” Even while the Reds were on their way to building their World Series team of 1970, Chicago Cubs baseball wasn’t that far out of mind. It was just a year earlier – as if we need to be reminded – when I was first introduced to Shangrila Lost – or what I’ve come to know as Chicago Cubs baseball. I couldn’t tell you a pitcher on that staff, but I can
