Loving the Cubs despite the pain

When I was three years old, my mother bought me a tiny Chicago Cubs uniform. Though she's a Chicago native, she hates baseball and couldn't have cared less about turning me into a fan at an early age. No, she dressed me up in a little Cubs outfit because she thought it was cute.

And thus began the obsession that continues to dominate my life. Since that fateful day that I first donned the elegant blue pinstripes, my interest in the team has gradually grown, evolving from an innocent hobby to a pathological obsession.

Over the years, my devotion to the Cubs has manifested itself in nearly every part of my life. For the sake of discussion — and humor — I submit a few of the more, well, ridiculous examples:

As a child, I dressed up in a Cubss uniform each year for Halloween for roughly a decade straight, except for 1994, when I walked around in plain clothes with a sign that read "On Strike."

For as a long as I can remember, the wish I make when blowing out my birthday candles has been the same: "I wish that the Cubs win the World Series this year." I'll worry about world peace later.

I wrote about the Cubs in one of my Princeton application essays and talked about them in the "senior speech" that I was required to give to my entire high school.

During the 2003 divisional playoffs, I found myself in the midst of a serious moral dilemma when a Cubs game coincided with services for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. I went to temple after convincing myself that God might punish me by making the Cubs lose if I didn't go. For the record, I don't even normally believe in God.

After the Cubs' meltdown against the Marlins in the NLCS later that fall, I suffered severe insomnia for a better part of a week.

And, in the most ridiculous example of my devotion, when Opening Day roles around each spring, I am totally and utterly convinced that this will be the year the Cubs finally win the World Series.

In my brain, of course, I know that it's a lost cause, that some combination of our lousy bullpen, Steve Bartman and the infamous Curse of the Billy Goat will conspire to seize defeat from the jaws of victory yet again. For 96 years in a row, after all, the Cubs have been synonymous with disappointment and heartbreak.

But, in my heart, I always believe that the disappointment is about to end, that the heartbreak is about to be replaced by unimaginable joy. Watching the Red Sox finally win last October only strengthened my faith.

Faith, really, is what being a Cubs fan boils down to. It's what gets me — and the rest of my excessively optimistic brethren — through the day when Joe Borowski blows another save. Yeah, I'm angry, often violently so, when the Cubs lose.

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But once I stop yelling at the TV and punching the wall (or my roommate), I can always remind myself that tomorrow will be a better day.

Over the years, I've learned commitment, patience, forgiveness, eternal optimism and, most importantly, unconditional love. As painful as cheering for the Cubs may be at times, I simply can't imagine ever rooting for another team.

To me, the Cubs represent all that is pure and good about baseball. As far as I can tell, Wrigley Field on a beautiful summer day is perfection manifested — the site of the magnificent green ivy in full bloom, the smell of hot dogs and peanuts and beer wafting through the air thanks to the Lake Michigan breeze, the sound of Harry Carray leading 40,000 fans in a boisterous rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

And to think, I almost became a Yankees fan.

In truth, I'm rather surprised I'm not. My father, the baseball fan in the family, grew up on Long Island, attending games at the Stadium during the heyday of Mantle and Maris. Why he let my mother dress me in that little Cubs outfit, I'll never know.

Certainly, if things had worked out differently and I'd ended up a Yankees fan, my life would be far easier. Of course, I would also be arrogant, spoiled and generally evil.

But none of that matters. I don't normally believe in destiny, but I think I was destined to be a Cubs fan, and it's a destiny I embrace with arms wide open. There are no fair-weather Cubs fans, only die-hards. It's a fraternity I'm proud to be a member of, as irrational as it may seem to the uninitiated.

See, I know that the years of heartbreak will be more than worth it one day, that the celebration will be that much sweeter. Heck, I'll probably break down and cry like a little girl. I can't wait.

And you know what? I'm betting that day will be this October, when we top the Yankees in the World Series in seven games.

Yeah, I believe.