Let me preface this by saying that I’m a die-hard and longtime Atlanta Braves fan who started watching the Braves on WTCG back in 1980. My father was a St. Louis Cardinal fan from his days as a youth because he grew up listening to the Red Birds playing on KMOX AM 1120, which was a 50,000 watt AM station out of St. Louis that could reach the southern depths of rural Copiah County, Mississippi in the 1950s. I would imagine that it was probably the only baseball game he could listen to at that point and also where he came up with my first name, Stan. I’ve always had the honor of being named after the greatest Cardinal of all time, Hall of Fame first baseman Stan Musial.
My father’s fandom for the Braves grew along with mine as we sat and watched Dale Murphy or Bob Horner smashing baseballs over the wall in Fulton County Stadium on the new Superstation out of Atlanta that was renamed WTBS sometime in the 80s. He still loved the Cardinals, but the Braves quickly won over his heart with a Western Division Titles in 1982. The Braves were quickly dispatched in the National League Championship Series when, you guessed it, the Cardinals swept them out in three games, eventually defeating the Milwaukee Brewers in a seven-game thriller for the ages. The Braves pretty much regressed after that 1982 season, but re-emerged as juggernaut in 1991 after their worst-to-first turnaround that included 14 Divisional Championships in a row minus the strike-shortened ’94 season.
The Braves won the National League West in 1991, 1992 and 1993 before moving into the Eastern Division, winning it 11 consecutive times from 1995 through 2005. Bobby Cox, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Chipper Jones (to name a few) become household names and the backbone of the Braves unprecedented run that included five National League Championships in 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996 and 1999. The Braves picked up the World Championship hardware in 1995, defeating the Cleveland Indians in six games, but have not won the World Series since. I say all this to bring in the “Lovable Losers”…who until recently, have had no success whatsoever.
I’ve always liked the Chicago Cubs because I loved baseball and during the summer in the early 1980s, they played all of their home games in the daylight because lights weren’t added until 1988. This allowed us to watch the Cubs on WGN early in the day and catch the Braves at night on TBS. Perfect, but my heart was totally with the Braves. I loved watching Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Rick Sutcliffe and Jody Davis during the afternoon, but we just seemed to always know that the Cubs would never win much. They were fun to watch, but I could just never hang my hat on them.
The Cubs futility pretty much started after they defeated the Detroit Tigers in five games to capture their last World Series title in 1908. They would play in the World Series for the last time in 1945 where they lost a heartbreaker in seven games to the Detroit Tigers. The curse of the goat began during this series after Cubs ownership kicked a local tavern owner and his pet goat out of some pretty nice box seats at Wrigley Field. The owner of the goat cursed the Cubs and said they would never win another World Series or even play in one again. The second part of that curse has been overcome because the Chicago Cubs are 2016 National League Champions…this series will be fun.
The Cleveland Indians have only fared slightly better, last winning a World Championship in six games over, ironically, the (Boston) Braves in 1948. The Cubs only postseason series win since 1908 was over the (Atlanta) Braves in 2003. Can you see how the Braves are sort of connected in a Kevin Bacon kind of way? Just Google “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” to see what I’m talking about if you’re not familiar with Bacon and his movies that seem to connect him to every actor ever––I’m not kidding.
Regardless of what team you are a fan of, the Cubs seem to have won over most of America’s heart and for that, I do feel bad for the Indians. They haven’t claimed a title in 71 years themselves, put that seems to pale in comparison with the Cubs last title coming 108 years ago, which is 39,457 days and there was no TV or radio to declare them champs. There were actually on 46 states at the time as well. The Cubs No. 1 pitcher was Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown and he was paid a whopping $3,500 for his efforts. Just six years before their 1908 Series win, the Cubs were known as the Chicago Orphans. A visit to Wrigley Field is indeed on my bucket list, as is Fenway Park, and I plan to go there at some point when the Atlanta Braves pay a visit to the friendly confines, and hopefully by then the Braves are back to respectability…which I do see coming in the not-so-distant future. But until then, I will be cheering the Cubbies on.
So there you have it, a fine bunch of young cubs the Orphans were, which is how they were affectionately mentioned at some point during that six-year span, to become the “Lovable Losers” 2016 powerhouse they are today…GO, CUBS, GO!!!
