Not everyone’s a baseball fan, but everyone understands the significance of an underdog achievement. For the Chicago Cubs, it’s been 106 seasons without a World Series championship victory, the longest in the entirety of Major League Baseball. This past Tuesday, the Cubs clinched a spot in the National League Championship Series. What’s the point?
As a New York Yankees fan who has followed baseball sparingly this past year, I have a different perspective than usual. Being detached from the fanaticism that usually consumes my baseball (or hockey) viewing habits has allowed me to take a step back and take stock of the MLB postseason situation.
In the American League (which the Yankees are in), the Texas Rangers/Toronto Blue Jays and Houston Astros/Kansas City Royals are vying to see which team from each match-up will move on to face each other in the American League Championship Series.
In the National League, the Cubs are waiting to see if they’ll face off against the New York Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. By the time this piece is published, both championship series will be set, and the winners of those two series will move on to face each other in the World Series.
Like most of America, I want to see the Cubs win the World Series. What a story it would be for 106-season drought to come to an end with a team that looks better than it has in several years. On the flip-side, I would also be fine with the Mets winning, despite the endless boasting I’ll undoubtedly hear from my friends and family, most of whom are die-hard Mets fans. In the end, what will happen will happen. As it pertains to this editorial though, baseball is just a metaphor.
Because I was not emotionally invested in the Yankees’ season this year, I am able to free myself from being embroiled in the competitive spirit that typically manifests itself while playing sports, or watching “our” teams go at it. With this detachment, I can see several narrative threads that are engaging, historic, and even beautiful (such as the Cubs’ drought ending or the Mets lighting up New York City). Like the cliché forest-and-the-trees metaphor, widening my perspective allowed me to see more than just a Yankees season loss, but the potentially immense joy that others could experience if the team they support—their hometown teams often—were to win the World Series, which I have experienced myself in 2009.
Being happy for others’ success, especially when I’m in a lull of success, is one of the more difficult things for me to do. At a time where fellow classmates, and even friends, are already accepting full-time job offers at Con Edison or Lockheed Martin, try not to let jealousy run rampant because “your team” isn’t winning. Celebrate with them on their success, because when your drought ends, you don’t want to be left with the regret of not being there for your friends when they were there for you.
Let’s go Cubs.
