Wait of the world

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder holds his young daughter, Olivia, before throwing out the first pitch of a Cubs baseball game.

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

"And when that day comes for that last winning run,
And I'm crying and covered with beer,
I look to the sky and know I was right today,
Someday we'll go all the way,
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way."
– Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam singer and insane Cubs fan

CHICAGO – There is more at stake here, understand, than merely satisfying a 100-year itch. We're talking about potential global implications if the Chicago Cubs win the World Series.

"If that happens, as a nation we should give up baseball and enjoy soccer, like the rest of the world," says Joe Mantegna, who before becoming a Hollywood star was born a Cubs fan and co-authored "Bleacher Bums," a play in which Wrigley Field is the center of the universe and those who inhabit it are fated to an eternal cycle of hope and suffering.

"I mean, wouldn't it be right?" says Mantegna, calling from L.A., where he is starring in the CBS series "Criminal Minds" but is anticipating a hiatus if the Cubs advance to the Series for the first time since 1945.

"And make a big statement about it. Go to the UN and say, 'You know, we made this decision. The Cubs have won the world championship. What's the point of going on? We'd just be rehashing old ground. We've got a lot of world problems here, and part of it may stem from the fact we're the only guys who haven't embraced the game with the ball and the foot. So we're just gonna show you how magnanimous we are as a country by just dumping this sport and playing soccer.'

"I think that will be good. I think it would help world peace. That's it. Cubs winning the World Series, that could be our ticket to world peace."

In the interest of a nobler cause, then, three Yahoo! Sports baseball writers – Tim Brown, Jeff Passan and I – canvassed a range of folks with Cubs connections, players past and present, celebrities and commoners, bartenders and barflies, true believers and scarred skeptics – to gauge whether this truly will be the first Cubs World Series title since 1908.

Murphy's Law – it ain't just the goat

Goat curse background

Sam Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago and nephew of William Sianis, sits with his billy goat in the tavern, in this Oct. 16, 2003, file photo. In the middle of the Chicago Cubs' last World Series appearance, tavern owner William Sianis and his pet goat were sitting in $7.20 box seats when it began to rain. Nearby fans began complaining about the odor until then-Cubs boss P.K. Wrigley stepped in and ordered both tossed out of the park. Sianis vowed the Cubs never would win another World Series.

(AP Photo/Steve Matteo)

"Just let the Cubs win, one [expletive] time."
– From a sketch currently playing at the Second City comedy revue

"Everyone talks about the curse," says actor Jeff Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm"), who was born in Chicago, flew back for the playoffs last season when the Cubs were swept by the Diamondbacks and vows to come back only if the Cubs advance to the Series. "The Red Sox had a real curse, and that was Babe Ruth. The Cubs' curse is they wouldn't let a guy with a goat in the ballpark and suddenly he has magic powers? I don't believe in curses at all. I believe it's been a bunch of bad luck."

You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in Chicago who has devoted more attention to this curse business than Grant DePorter. He's the Chicago restaurant owner (Harry Caray's Restaurant Group) who paid six figures for the Bartman ball and blew it up for charity (more later on the unfortunate Steve Bartman, the fan who reached for a foul ball in the 2003 National League Championship Series and nearly had to enter a witness protection program afterward).

But not satisfied with merely obliterating one source of Cubs sorrow, DePorter embarked on a search to discover whether history would give up any clues to the source of a century of Cubs failure, beyond the reality-based myth of a Chicago saloon keeper, Billy Sianis, a Greek immigrant who brought his pet goat to the 1945 World Series, was ejected from the premises and for that affront allegedly cursed the Cubs to a Series-less future.

DePorter contends you have to go back to 1908, the last time the Cubs won a World Series, to understand what has happened in the interim.

"It all comes down to one man – Charles Murphy," says DePorter, who just in time for the postseason has come out with a new book, written with Mark Vancil, called "Hoodoo: Unraveling the 100-Year Mystery of the Chicago Cubs."

"He was the owner of the team at the time, and the fans hated him, the players hated him. When they got to the World Series, he withheld tickets from the fans, gave them to his friends.

"When they won the World Series in '08, the players went out to dinner, and refused to let the owner join them. George M. Cohan – remember "Yankee Doodle Dandy"? – was friends with Frank Chance and Tinker and Evers, all those guys. He took them to a restaurant called Rectors in Chicago.

"Murphy was pissed off. The next day, he put an open letter in every paper in Chicago. He wrote, 'Hey, don't criticize me.' He finished the whole thing with how Rome was not built in a day and it takes a long time, even in Chicago to get to the World Series. He was kind of jinxing it on the spot.

"You've heard of Murphy's Law, which says anything that can go wrong will go wrong? That billy goat in '45, what do you think his name was? Murphy. In 1969, when that black cat walked past the Cubs dugout in Shea Stadium, Bob Murphy was the announcer for the Mets and was the guy calling that whole thing. In '84, when the Cubs played the Padres, where did San Diego play? Jack Murphy Stadium. The Cubs won the first two in Wrigley, lost all three in Jack Murphy.

"In 2003, that was the year Jack Murphy closed, Bob Murphy retired, and Harvard celebrated the 50th anniversary of Murphy's Law."

Hoodoo – which is what players back in '08 called hexes – or hooey?

DePorter isn't taking any chances. Last year, after discovering a menu from the dinner Cohan hosted, DePorter recreated the meal and invited a descendant of Murphy to attend. He also resurrected the West Side Rooters Social Club, a Cubs fan club that had disbanded in 1908, and installed Ernie Banks as chairman, the same position fellow shortstop Joe Tinker held a century earlier. A week ago, again duplicating history, DePorter hosted a West Side Rooters ball – Cubs catcher Geovany Soto was chairman of the affair.

Mantegna

"We think Murphy's power is gone," DePorter says.

He wasn't sorry, however, that the Mets – with rookie Danny Murphy – were eliminated from the playoffs on the last day of the regular season.

"You're asking," Mantegna says, "what's the explanation, if there is such a thing as a curse, or something that is beyond the comprehension of the human mind. The Cubs thing might be it. This might be the Gordian knot, this might be the thing nobody really knows.

"But whatever, let's face it, it could end this year, who knows? You just hope in the 21st century, there will be some gratification sometime."

Why it matters

"We've been waiting for this party for 100 years."
– Actor Jim Belushi, emceeing the Cubs rally Tuesday at Daley Plaza

First of all, it doesn't matter, at least not to everyone in a town that has another baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, who won the World Series in 2005, ending their own 88-year drought. The White Sox are also in this postseason after a dramatic 1-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins in a tiebreaker Tuesday night. Mayor Richard Daley is a White Sox fan; he squirmed while wearing a Cubs cap at Tuesday's rally for the Cubs in Daley Plaza.

Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois and Democratic candidate for president, risked alienating an entire bloc of voters when he also identified himself as a White Sox fan and took a shot at Cubs fans in the process, one that made its way onto countless Internet message boards.

Asked this summer who he'd root for if the Cubs and White Sox met in the World Series, Obama responded: "Oh, that's easy, White Sox." He then went on to say, "I'm not one of these fair-weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball. South Side."

Cubs' Carlos Zambrano points to the fans as actor John Cusack, left, points back at him after Zambrano hit a solo home run against the Reds on Aug. 21, 2008.

(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

But for all the excitement engendered by the White Sox sweeping the Astros to win in 2005, that would pale compared to the Cubs winning the World Series.

"Chicago will be Mardi Gras," says actor John Cusack, who grew up a Cubs fan in suburban Evanston. "It'll be 15 times Mardi Gras."

Mark Grace played for the Cubs for 13 seasons, His first year in Arizona, in 2001, the Diamondbacks won the World Series. Grace now is a broadcaster for Fox. Nothing, he says, has compared to being a Cub.

"I don't have to buy a meal the rest of my life in Chicago," he says. "I do, because I'm not out to fleece people. But that's just the way it is. It's an indescribable love affair. They love and respect their own. You look out here in Miller Park and you're seeing Grace jerseys still. I haven't played for the Chicago Cubs in eight years.

"I can't imagine having a better experience. I was never a Yankee or Red Sox, but I can't imagine a bigger love affair with the fans. If you gave them an honest effort and went out and played hard, they loved you."

Hall of Fame outfielder Billy Williams played for perhaps the best Cubs team that failed to play in a World Series, the 1969 club that blew an 8½-game lead to the New York Mets, who became the "Miracle Mets" after they went on to win the World Series.

"Everywhere you go, there's a sign of the Cubs," says Williams, who now serves the club as a senior adviser. "It shows you that we're like [the] Dallas [Cowboys] – we're America's team. People root for us. I don't know if it's simply because we're the underdog and human nature is to do that, but we're winning this year so we're getting away from that. It's a great time to play for the Cubs. It's just a great time, period."

Williams broke in with the Cubs in 1959, giving him nearly a half-century with the club.

"I grew up here in Wrigley Field," he says. "It's helped me meet a lot of people I still see on the street in Chicago. At that time, we were playing all day games. It was a great time in my life because I could come out here and play and go back home and enjoy the family."

Cubs fans are "loyal to the point of absurdity – loyal beyond all reason," says Beth Murphy, owner of Murphy's Bleachers, the popular watering hole outside the ballpark.

"This is a terrific baseball neighborhood, the best in the world. I love Wrigley Field. I've been a Cubs fan since the late '60s. I've been through a lot of heartbreak. I've described the Cubs as an abusive boyfriend who you let back again and again, and your teeth end up getting knocked down your throat.

"I think they're going to the World Series again. I've thought that before."

In 1984, Cusack was 19 and making a movie, "The Journey of Natty Gann," when he left the set in anticipation of watching the Cubs win the pennant in San Diego. Instead, the Cubs couldn't hold a lead in Game 5, with first baseman Leon Durham committing a critical error.

"I couldn't speak," he says. "I got back to the set, and the only thing I said were my lines for two or three days. Finally they said, 'That's enough. You've got to talk to us.' It was the worst.

"I grew up religiously checking the box scores, knowing what every utility infielder was hitting. The Cubs create maniacal tendencies. Have I grown out of it? No, I haven't yet. I think it becomes more and more acute. More insane."

Cubs general manager Jim Hendry understands his audience – and the responsibility that comes with the job.

"I don't take it lightly," he says. "You can't come to this ballpark and watch a game and not realize the importance to so many people. This summer has been an unbelievable experience, watching how packed the place is every day, how long they stay after games, how many come to the road games. It's really the generations before them that put their hearts into this team."

Alfonso Soriano began his career as a Yankee, and likens being a Cub to wearing pinstripes. But this never happened in Yankee Stadium.

"There are two old ladies," he says. "Every day they're there in left field. If it's a hot day, they'll bring a [spray] bottle full of cold water for me. They're like my grandmothers."

Bartman revisited (briefly)

In this Oct. 14, 2003 file photo, Chicago Cubs left fielder Moises Alou reaches into the stands unsuccessfully for a foul ball tipped by fan Steve Bartman, wearing headphones and a Cubs hat, against the Florida Marlins in the eighth inning during Game 6 of the National League championship series at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

(AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

"To me, it was just a natural reaction. I think it was terrible for people to say it was his fault. Poor Bartman. So sad."
– Dutchie Caray, wife of the late, legendary Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray

As far as anyone knows, Steve Bartman has not been back to Wrigley Field since Oct. 14, 2003, the night he attempted to catch a foul ball at the same time Cubs left fielder Moises Alou was intent on doing the same. The ball hit Bartman's arm, Alou stamped his feet in anger, the Cubs blew a 3-0 lead and the crowd turned on Bartman, who needed a security escort to exit through a storm of hurled trash and abuse. It grew even worse after the Cubs lost the next night to the Marlins and were eliminated from the playoffs. Bartman was vilified by hysterical voices in the media, and even though he issued an apology, his home address became public knowledge and the cops sent squad cars to protect him.

The way the incident played out still angers many, including Mantegna.

"I talked to [director David] Mamet about this, and Mamet wanted to write a movie about it, he was so taken by the whole thing," Mantegna says.

"Who the [expletive] hell do you think you are, picking on this Cubs kid named Bartman? The nerve. To tell you the truth, after what happened and in the wake of some of the Cubs' attitude about it, it was like, 'Get out of here. You guys make too much money.'

"If I'd have been [manager] Dusty Baker, I would have taken Bartman down to the clubhouse that next day and said, 'This kid has been getting death threats, his life has been changed, he came to the ballpark with a Cubs hat on, he's reaching for a foul ball and that thing happened. Now, how are you guys going to play this out? It's on you guys. How are you going to play this out?

" 'Are you going to let this kid carry that stigma the rest of his life, or are you guys going to butch up and win this [expletive] thing?'

"To me, it was all the fair-weather Cub fans. What, have you been following the team for 10 years and you're disappointed that they haven't gotten there, so you're going to blame it on this kid?

"Bartman was a fan, you know what I mean? And that's what 'Bleacher Bums' is about. This kid didn't want the Cubs to lose; it's the last thing in the world he wanted. He'd been exactly what he was: a fan, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he suffered the consequences."

An equally sympathetic Cusack, who was sitting that night in a skybox directly above Bartman, added this: "He was the unwitting Judas goat for a higher force. It could have been any of us. There's a Bartman in all of us. We're all responsible."

The needle and the damage done

"Do they still play the blues in Chicago, when baseball season rolls around,
"When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play,
"In their ivy-covered burial ground?"
– the late, great Steve Goodman, from a "Dying Cubs Fan Last Request"

When you're collectively 0 for your last 99, does that start playing on your head?

"Like all well-seasoned Cubs fans, I find it hard not to be fatalistic," says Scott Turow, the Chicago-born attorney and best-selling author ("Presumed Innocent"). "I think this year's team is very deep and very good. But the century-long legacy of losing is an enormous psychological burden, which is what I think the Bartman incident proved.

"If anything goes wrong, it's hard not to feel cursed or doomed. If this team gets off to a good start against L.A., yes I think they can get to the Series – although God forbid it's against the White Sox."

“I leave the past in the past, because we want to do this in the present.”

– Alfonso Soriano

Soriano, who has hit 62 home runs in his two seasons with the Cubs, professes ignorance of the team's fallow past. The same, he says, could be said of outfielder Kosuke Fukudome, the team's Japanese import.

"The media told me," Soriano says. "I didn't really care. It happened before I was born. So I just ignore it. I leave the past in the past, because we want to do this in the present."

Cubs manager Lou Piniella has breezily dismissed any talk of the Cubs being saddled by the weight of history, but others aren't so sure.

"Players hear about what is bound to happen," says former pitcher Jim Brosnan, who wrote "The Long Season," originally was drafted by the Cubs and was the winning pitcher when the Cincinnati Reds clinched the National League pennant in 1961. "All those stories, you've got to think when you get up and you're going to the ballpark, something's going to happen that shouldn't happen or has never happened before, and you're going to lose. Those stories get repeated over and over again.

"If you've spent five years with the Cubs, you've heard five reasons or 50 different reasons why the hex is on."

The last time

"I just have four words for you – this is the year!"
– Ron Santo, former Cubs third baseman and current broadcaster, at the rally

Ned Colletti, the Dodgers general manager, grew up in the shadow of O'Hare Airport. He adored the Cubs and left a job as a hockey writer for a Philadelphia newspaper to take a job in the Cubs' public relations department, his entry into a 25-year front-office career.

"All of my uncles on my dad's side were great baseball fans," Colletti says. "There's only one left."

That would be Uncle Frank, who is 75. In the fall of 1945, Frank's older brothers went to Wrigley Field to score tickets and watch the Cubs play the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Frank desperately wanted to go, but as the youngest, he was left behind. Next time, he was told.

He's still waiting. Ned took his uncle to Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS in 2003.

"And it was like another one of his brothers had passed," Ned says of Frank. "It was brutal."

Pafko

Andy Pafko is 89. He's the last living Cub to have played in the '45 Series.

"I'm so old I can't remember," says a cheery Pafko, who isn't too old to have sung "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch a couple of times at Wrigley.

"It was just a thrill for a young kid to be in the World Series. I played in the World Series for three different teams. The Cubs, the Dodgers and the Braves. Guys like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, they never got to play. I played for three. How lucky can a guy get?"

Marv Levy, the former Buffalo Bills coach, grew up in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. His father was in the wholesale produce business, supplying small groceries with their fruits and vegetables. Levy helped until he was 15 and his dad told him to go home and play football.

"World War II was over, I was still in the service – what they called the Army Air Corps," Levy says. "I was home on furlough. The Cubs got to the seventh game of the World Series, and a friend of mine still in the service went down and stood in line outside of Wrigley Field.

"Because we were in uniform, we got priority. We had to fork up a dollar ten for tickets. If we hadn't been in uniform, it would have been a dollar and a quarter.

"I always think it's going to be the year the Cubs win. I can't give you the lineup, but I follow them. I don't come home and sit down and watch nine innings on television but I'm a Cubs fan, and it will be a great day in Chicago if they were to win the World Series. My goodness."

Is this heaven? No, it's Wrigley

"If this is the year the Cubs win the World Series, this will be the second greatest Chicago fire ever, because the city will burn."
– Mike Downey, Chicago Tribune columnist and Chicago native

Milt Pappas was the last Cubs pitcher to throw a no-hitter – he was squeezed out of a perfect game on a full-count pitch with two outs in the ninth – until Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs threw a no-hitter against the Houston Astros a few weeks ago in a game moved to Milwaukee because of Hurricane Ike. The next night, Pappas was in Wrigley Field, catching a ceremonial first pitch from Zambrano.

"Do they have the team to go all the way?" Pappas says. "Of course they do They've got good pitching. Good hitting. The bullpen has been OK. I told Lou a number of times, don't burn the damn bullpen up before the playoffs."

Tom Dreesen is a Chicago-born comedian and was a frequent "Tonight Show" guest in the Johnny Carson days. He and former columnist Ron Rapoport recently collaborated on a book, "Tim and Tom," about Dreesen's partnership in the '70s with Tim Reid, the first interracial comedy act in America.

In this July 21, 1989, file photo Chicago Cubs' broadcaster Harry Caray sings "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch at Chicago's Wrigley Field.

(AP Photo/John Swart)

"I had eight brothers and sisters," Dreesen says. "We lived in a shack. I used to shine shoes in a tavern and sell newspapers on the corner. I'd bring the money home to my mother to feed my brothers and sisters, but she'd keep a nickel out every time, until we got enough money in a little cup. Then my brother and I would take the IC train downtown, then the elevated to Wrigley, and sit in the bleachers.

"To be a Cub fan is one of the most exciting things in the world because there's always hope. There's no doubt in my mind this is the year. I've been saying that ever since I was 6 years old. I'm going to keep saying that until this is the year."

It has been 10 years since Dutchie Caray's husband, Harry, died, but she hasn't lost her affection for the Cubs. Pitcher Kerry Wood is a "very special young man," she says. Another favorite is pitcher Ryan Dempster, in part, she says, because he does a dead-on impression of Harry.

"They're playing well," she says. "They've got a great team. I have a feeling that maybe this is the year. The city will go nuts."

Win it this year? "I think so," Billy Williams says. "I really think so. Deep in my heart. You don't want to say they can't."

Win it all?

"This might be the seismic shift," Cusack says. "The stock market crashes, the Republican Party is done for, and the Cubs win the World Series. It'll be the greatest sports drama of the century."

Rings all around?

"In most sports, talent's going to eventually win out," Grace says. "And the Cubs are the most talented team. Lou Piniella is the right man for this team. He keeps these guys focused. He keeps the superstars' egos in check. If they don't win, then I think they underachieved."

Phil Jackson knows what it's like to win in Chicago. Before he coached the Lakers, he won six NBA championships with Michael Jordan's Bulls.

"My son went back to Chicago for his 20th birthday about a month ago and went to a game," Jackson says. "He says they were still thinking about how the Cubbies were going to lose it – such negativity."

Even so, he added, "the Cubs have the heart of Chicago.

"I've been watching," Jackson says, "and I've always liked Lou Piniella. He's due."

That pessimism – a self-defense mechanism? – surfaces momentarily in Garlin, who thinks the Cubs will win, but adds, "If they don't win it this year, they'll never win it."

But what happens if October ends, and the Cubs are the last team standing?

"Wherever I am, hopefully the stands, I'll just be crying hysterically," Garlin says. "I can't imagine doing anything else but weeping uncontrollably. Truly."

Cusack is in Vancouver, making a movie, but plans to return for the Series.

"If they win," he says, "I think I'll go out on the street on my bike and roll from party to party."

When Soriano thinks about winning, he thinks about his "grandmothers."

"I can't imagine what it would be like," he says. "Crazy. Yeah, it would be crazy. I would want to see it, just because it would be difficult to believe. We want to be happy, and we would be happy. But it would be nothing like it will be for them."