My Cubs A love story

Scott Simon

Book - 2017

"NPR's Scott Simon's personal, heartfelt reflections on his beloved Chicago Cubs, replete with club lore, memorable anecdotes, frenetic fandom and wise and adoring intimacy that have made the world champion Cubbies baseball's most tortured--and now triumphant--franchise. No metaphor is necessary; the Chicago Cubs have been the living example of disappointment and failure for more than a century--until now. The Cubs' 2016 World Series win marked the end of a 108-year drought in the team's history, and Game 7 will forever be remembered as one of the most thrilling, monumental moments in sports history. For Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday and a lifelong Cubs fan, it was a moment he never t...hought he'd live to see. MY CUBS chronicles Simon's adolescence in Chicago as a die-hard fan to tell the story of the relationship between the team and the neighborhood and city, and how the condition of Cubness has both charmed and haunted the lives of so many fans. From theories and curses to jinxes and myths, Simon chronicles how a team of "loveable losers" inspired such fervor and dedication from their fans, and how their 2016 win transcended sports to become an underdog narrative for the whole nation"--

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York : Blue Rider Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Scott Simon (author)
Physical Description
145 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780735218031
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The host of NPR's Weekend Edition has traveled the world and seen some of its most beautiful vistas but flatly states the most breathtaking sight is Chicago's Wrigley Field. Growing up in Chicago, Simon attended school a few blocks from the Cubs' home field; he and his friends would mimic their baseball heroes, pretending they possessed the sweet swing of Billy Williams or the solid upright stance of Ron Santo. Legendary Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse, originator of the jubilant Hey Hey! home-run call, was even Simon's godfather. (Simon says he met a woman who claimed to know that a man was from Chicago if he yelled Hey Hey! at the moment of climax.) This very entertaining recollection of Simon's baseball love affair covers years of just plain lousy baseball, flare-ups of competence (never sustained), and the heartbreak of 1969's September collapse, as well the infamous playoff in 2003, when a fan, Steve Bartman, possibly interfered with Moises Alou's attempt to catch a foul ball. There will be many books about the Cubs' 2016 World Series win, but it's doubtful any will surpass Simon's for humor, poignancy, and, well, love.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Just in time for the baseball spring training season, NPR Weekend Edition host Simon delivers a short and heartfelt memoir about his lifelong love for the Chicago Cubs. Unlike his earlier Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan, which combined stories about Chicago sports with a look at his development as a journalist, this memoir is all Cubby blue: "Being a Cubs fan is my nature, my heritage, and probably somewhere in my chromosomes." He tells fascinating tales of growing up and going to school near the Cubs' fabled Wrigley Field as well as having Jack Brockhouse, a legendary Cubs broadcaster, as his godfather. He also excels on explaining the myth of the Cubs being "in the orbit of some dark star" until they won the World Series in 2016, as well as the truth that the team "didn't deserve to be in the World Series in 2003 if they couldn't come back from a debacle that led to a breakdown and win game seven." Simon gives readers a wonderful look at how a Cubs fan-indeed, any devoted fan of any team-has a feeling of "love, not loyalty." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Review by Library Journal Review

The Chicago Cubs are notorious for being known as the "lovable losers"-a team that continued to lose for so many years that some believed they would never win another championship. Having last won a World Series in 1908, the Cubs were the only Major League Baseball team that had not won a championship in over a century; the 2016 Cubs changed all that. Journalist Simon (NPR's Weekend Edition), a lifelong, die-hard Cubs fan, has written a personal reflection of his beloved Cubs and the journey to the championship season. As a passionate fan, Simon takes readers through a sometimes emotional trip down Cubs history, exploring the roller-coaster ride fans have been experiencing for several years. Considering the "Billy Goat" curse, black cats, and the incident with fan Steve Bartman, along with hope-filled teams that included players Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, Lou Brock, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo, Simon paints the picture of what it was like to take the good with the bad. VERDICT Longtime Cubs fans will relate to Simon's story, which makes for a quick and illuminating read.-Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The NPR Weekend Edition host offers an extended personal essay about his lifelong infatuation with the Chicago Cubs.Even nonfans of Major League Baseball might know that the Cubs finally won the World Series this past October, a feat they hadn't accomplished since 1908. For decades, fans and pundits spoke, often superstitiously, about the team's curse. Simon (Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother and the Lessons of a Lifetime, 2015, etc.) is unquestionably a die-hard fan. "My politics, religion, and personal tastes change with whatever I learn from life," he writes. "But being a Cubs fan is my nature, my heritage, and probably somewhere in my chromosomes. If you prick me, I'm quite sure I'll bleed Cubby blue." Over the years, the author bought into the myth that on the rare occasions when the Cubs were playing well, he needed to stay away from the stadium, TV broadcasts, and the radio play-by-play lest his attention would somehow cause the team to lose. Numerous devoted Cubs' fans and baseball commentators have covered most of the material in this narrowly focused memoir. Occasionally, Simon delves into mostly forgotten Cubs' history, such as the franchise's slowness to hire black players after Jackie Robinson broke the sport's racial barrier shortly after World War II. The author's musings on the culture of Chicago and the overall nature of over-the-top sports fandom are more original and thus more enlightening. For example, Simon relates the saga of the Billy Goat Tavern, the legendary sports bar near Wrigley Field. The author is also informative about the commercial and cultural life that has developed near the stadium, an area eventually dubbed Wrigleyville. The author is a solid stylist, and his descriptions of Cubs' players, managers, and owners resonate, as do his anecdotes about his wife and daughters as they try to understand his mania. A pleasant, slight memoir with a happy ending. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2017 Scott Simon I have this dream. It's the seventh game of the World Series, bottom of the ninth inning, Cubs against the Yankees, and the bases are loaded. The score is 2-1, Cubs, but the Yanks are threatening. (The Yankees haven't been a great team for years, but they're still satisfying to beat in dreams.) Wrigley Field boils and churns with cheers, claps, and fans on their feet waving "W" flags. The green field glows. The ivy on the walls gleams under the bright white light and rustles in the crisp lake wind. The Cubs are an out away from winning a World Series, against all odds. But they've run out of pitchers. Fergie Jenkins, Kerry Wood, Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, Greg Maddux, and Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown (an improbable all-era roster of Cubs all-stars) have all thrown brilliantly. But the bullpen is almost bare. The manager (a gray-haired, knob-nosed fusion of Joe Maddon, Charlie Grimm, and Joe McCarthy) is downcast and flummoxed. Then a light goes on in his eyes. "It's a crazy idea, I know," he tells his coaches. "But I got a feeling . . ." I hear my name crackle over the old tin speakers and echo over the slatted green seats and scuffed concrete stairs. Astonishment rolls through the crowd. The announcers (who sound like Joe Buck and Bob Costas) are stupefied, if not quite speechless. "A move no one could have predicted . . ." I take slow, deliberate strides over the electrified green grass and look down to see my arms in white sleeves with Cubby blue stripes. I reach the mound. Some of the astounded hubbub dies. The catcher (all grit and spit, a grizzled combination of Randy Hundley, Gabby Hartnett, and David Ross) hands me the ball. "No need to go over signs," he says through a chaw and a grin. He knows I have just one pitch: a fat, slow dodo of a throw that catches the wind like a candy wrapper, darts, floats, curves, and is preposterously difficult to hit. My catcher returns to crouch behind home plate. In the broadcast booth, Joe and Bob sputter to explain this stunning turn. "He's a fan. But he knows a lot about the franchise, and he's been practicing his pitch at the gym. And the Cubs must have seen something they liked, because here he is . . ." The Yankee batter glowers and spits. He's not Derek, Gehrig, or the Mick, but some malevolent, swearing, gob- spitting, steel-bearded, pinstriped brute. In fact, let's call him the Brute. He tells our catcher, "Look what the cat dragged to the mound." Then the Brute glares at me: "Time for batting practice, rook." I take a deep breath. The seats at Wrigley roil with 43,000 Cubs fans who take a sudden deep breath at the same time and fall silent. I look to my right to see the all-star Cubs spirits of Kris Bryant and Ron Santo dance on their toes at third, and Addison Russell, Ernie Banks, and Joe Tinker at short. I glance to my right: Javy Báez and Ryno Sandberg are on patrol at second base, while Anthony Rizzo and Mark Grace spit and pound the pockets of their gloves at first. I look in to my catcher. I draw back my arms. I twist slightly to put my power into the psoas muscle (as my yoga trainer has taught me) and bring my right arm through above my shoulder, snapping off the throw with my right hand. All action seems to slow. I see the ball hang in the night air, snag the lake wind, then float and weave, its red seams whirling. The Brute spits, then swings mightily. But the fat of his bat misses by six inches, and I hear--43,000 fans hear--his swing whiff the air like a tree cracking and falling. "Stee-rike!" The Brute steps back to spit and swear. He wipes his huge, grimy hands across his pinstripes and yells out to the mound, "Try that again, meat. I got your number now." My wife, Caroline, our daughters, Elise and Paulina, our dog, and my late mother sit together in grandstand seats along the third base line. All but our dog, Daisy, have their heads lowered in anticipated embarrassment. (Daisy believes.) My mother tells all nearby, "Well, you know, darlings, all that writing stuff came later. Pitching for the Cubs is really what he's always wanted to do. I just hope . . ." I shake off my catcher's sign, but it's an act; I'll throw the same pitch, and hope he won't see it coming. I rear back, thrust forward, and let the ball go from the tips of my fingers. It bobs and weaves as capriciously as the flight of a firefly. The Brute holds back for an instant, addled and confused, then tries to punch the ball with his bat. The gesture looks desperate and pathetic. The Brute misses by a foot. The roar of the crowd is so loud I can only read the lips of the ump as he bellows, "Stee-rike two!" Up in the booth, Bob and Joe agree as one. "Nothing quite like this has ever been seen in baseball history. The Chicago Cubs--historically one of the most beloved, but easily the most cursed, hexed, and jinxed franchise in sports history--are a strike away from winning the World Series and have bet it all on a longtime fan with a freakishly effective pitch. How amazing! How utterly . . . Cub-like!" Ernie Banks trots in from short to hold up a single, slim finger. "Just one more, Scooter, one more!" Ron Santo and Kris Bryant pound their gloves at third, while Javy and Ryno draw their toes around second base. I shake off a first sign. Then a second, then a third. My catcher, who knows this plan, gives his plump brown glove a last thump and holds it over the heart of the plate. I rear back and rock my psoas. But this time, I don't snap off a last floater of a pitch--what the Brute, the NSA, the KGB, MI5, and thousands in the stands and sixty million people tuned in at home expect. Instead, I bring my right arm through with the power of a rocket burst. The seams on the ball whizz and whirr into a blinding blur. The crowd inhales. The Brute rocks back on his heels, too astonished even to lift his bat from his shoulders. The radar gun f lickers before it glows with three numerals: 101 mph. My fastball smacks the catcher's mitt like a crack of lightning. The Brute thumps his hitless bat on the ground in defeat and frustration, where it leaves an angry gash the size of a canal. The ump cries, "Strike three!" Joe and Bob sputter, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it! Against all odds, and after more than a century . . ." as Ernie, Ron, Ryno, Kris, Javy, Gabby, David, Fergie, Kyle, Jon, and Kerry pile all over me on the mound and a sea of Cubby blue fills the Friendly Confines of the greatest and greenest old brick ballpark, with her ivy-covered walls.   I am a Cubs fan. A husband and father, an American, a Chicagoan, and a Cubs fan. My politics, religion, and personal tastes change with whatever I learn from life. But being a Cubs fan is my nature, my heritage, and probably somewhere in my chromosomes. If you prick me, I'm quite sure I'll bleed Cubby blue. I am in the news business, and try to keep myself apprised of the timeliest information about unrest, wars, finance, and affairs of state. But in the morning, I usually check the scores of Cubs games the moment my feet hit the floor. I've been blessed to see the Rose City of Petra, the Pink City of Jaipur, and the gracefully gushing fountains in the Place de la Concorde. But I still can't imagine a more beautiful place on earth than Wrigley Field, an ivied spot in a city setting of red brick against lakefront towers, especially on a soft August afternoon or crisp autumn night. In the poetic opening words of The Adventures of Augie March , Saul Bellow defines the churning urban forces that have shaped his title character. I've made a few adjustments:   I am an American, north side Chicago born--Chicago, that City of Big Shoulders--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, and historically often dead last in the National League. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, or as Moe Drabowsky, the Cubs pitcher, once put it, "We came out of the dugout for opening day and saw a fan holding up a sign: 'Wait 'Til Next Year.'"   To be devoted to the Chicago Cubs is to carry a torch of love that defies comparison. If rooting for the New York Yankees has been like rooting for Wal-Mart or Microsoft, what has it been like to root for the Cubs? No metaphor for doom has ever improved on "rooting for the Chicago Cubs." People used to use compare the Cubs to the Hindenburg and the Titanic. But lives were actually lost in those failures; and besides, they sank just once. The Cubs couldn't win a World Series for 108 years. During those decades, scientists split the atom in Chicago. Chicagoans built towers that scraped the sky. They improvised a new kind of comedy and transformed drama. Chicago writers pumped blood and muscle into literature. A Chicagoan walked on the moon. Chicagoans won Nobel Prizes in every category and invented Twinkies, Playboy magazine, and open-heart surgery. A Chicago man was elected president of the United States. (And actually, I'm glad it was a White Sox fan. A Cubs fan with nuclear weapons? I imagine a mushroom cloud over Milwaukee. "Oh, jeez, I thought that was to call for a pizza . . .") But the Chicago Cubs still couldn't win the World Series. The Cubs have been the passion that confirms the triumph of hope over experience. During the holiday season that followed the Cubs 2016 World Series win, a department store Santa Claus caught my eye with a white-gloved wave. He told his elves to let me approach his gilded chair. Santa reached below his throne, doffed his signature red stocking cap, and pulled on a Cubs hat. "I was a marine," Santa said. "Went to 'Nam in sixty- nine. By August, Cubs were nine games up in the National League race," he continued, "when they sent me out into the shit ." Santa swore like a sailor, or anyhow like a marine. "No Twitter-twat or e-mail in those days. We couldn't listen to that Good Morning, Vietnam guy either, or Charlie would find us. It was just us, Charlie, and the shit. By the time I got out of the jungle, it was December. I grabbed hold of the first guy I saw in the clear and shook him to pieces. 'Who the hell won the World Series?' I asked. 'Who won?' 'Oh, New York,' he told me, and I said, 'Fucking Yankees, again, hey? Well, at least the Cubs finally got our chance.' And this kid says, 'No sir. It was the New York Mets what won.' And I shouted at him, 'The Mets? Fucking Mets, not even the Yanks? The goddamn Cubs had a nine-game lead! Did the team bus run off a cliff? Goddamn mother-loving ass- licking . . ." Santa Cub grew exhaustively vulgar. "'I survived the shit just to hear that the Cubs blew it again?'" "But this year . . ." I told him, and Santa Cub jiggled his post-marine belly like a bowlful of jelly. "We earned the World Series 108 times over, hey? Our daddies and mammies and grandparents. Me and you." A few more families had lined up to see him, and Santa switched back to his home-field red headgear. He adjusted his belly like an umpire's chest protector. "C'mon, kids," he called over to the families. "Step on over and say hello. Just chatting with this nice man. Santa and this man already got our present, didn't we, pallie? One we've waited for a long time." Santa really does have a twinkle in his eye. Excerpted from My Cubs: A Love Story by Scott Simon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.