When I was a boy, my father and grandfather fought for my soul, taking me either to Cubs games at Wrigley Field (Northsider Dad) or White Sox games at Comiskey Park (Southsider Papa). We went so often that I thought the national anthem’s last words were “Play ball!” Paternal love won out, I suppose — I became a benighted Cubs fan. Also, I loved Ernie Banks, the irrepressible Mr. Cub.
Our last Wrigley game together occurred in 1967, when I was 10 and he was 40. Then we moved to Wisconsin, which had lost the Braves to Atlanta the previous year. I managed to still follow the Cubs on my father’s massive overseas radio, even when they played late-night West Coast games.
So I witnessed what remains one of the most stunning collapses in modern sports (yes, even worse than the Packers in that 2015 NFC Championship game). In 1969, the Cubs blew a 9 1/2-game mid-August lead and finished 8 games behind the Mets. I was so invested in that team, in Ernie Banks finally playing in a World Series, that when it all fell apart, I pretty much had a nervous breakdown.
When the Brewers arrived in 1970, I had a choice — back my new home-state team, or remain loyal to those lovable, anguish-inducing losers. This is when I learned something about myself: I could love two teams simultaneously. (Note to people who extrapolate life lessons from sports metaphors: This may be fine for sports teams, but not for romantic partners.)
It didn’t hurt that the Brewers stemmed from the year-old expansion (and bankrupt) Seattle Pilots, and so were also lovable losers. I could now cheer for a team in each league, and though the chances were less than Olivia Munn dropping Aaron Rodgers for moi (hey, a boy can dream), each spring brought hope that come fall, the Cubs and Brewers would meet in the World Series.
Did I mention that a boy can dream?
In the years following, I rode both teams’ ups and, more often, downs. Still, the nature of baseball is that of both failure and hope. A great hitter averages three hits every 10 plate appearances. If you record an intentional out, giving yourself up for the common good, it counts not as an at bat, but as “a sacrifice.” George Carlin has a great bit on the differences between football and baseball, one being that players, when they score, are going home. “Home! I’m going home!” And, yes, I can love my Packers, but still agree with George Will—perhaps for the only time—that “Football combines the two worst things about America: It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
By 1974, I had a new reason to cheer the Brewers. They brought up a young shortstop, Robin Yount, all of 18—my age! A guy my age was playing in the major leagues. And in 1982, he spearheaded a great team, one that finally played in a World Series. Yes, we lost in seven games to the Cardinals, but hope sprang eternal — next year! Next year! With Yount and Cooper and Thomas and Vukovich and Gantner and Molitor and Sutton and Ogilvie and all the rest, we could not lose!
We lost. Years of mediocrity followed. Still, I kept cheering them on. Surely one or the other—or great God in heaven, both!—would someday win the Series, right? I mean, why not? Hope springs eternal. And even if they didn’t, what kept you going was the belief that they could. Play ball!
After college, during my peripatetic years, I cheered other teams as well—the Double-A Syracuse and Memphis teams, and the Twins when I lived in Minneapolis. I got to experience sweet, sweet triumph in ’87 and ’91, when the Twins won the Series, made more poignant by my two oldest children being born those years. I thought of writing the Twins and telling them about the corollary, offering to keep having kids if they could give us Series tickets, but my wife wasn’t having it.
Things come full circle with baseball when you have kids. By the time Roman, my second child, was born, I had returned to Wisconsin (“Home! I’m going home!”), and we lived close enough to County Stadium/Miller Park that we could bicycle to games. Or take the train to Wrigley. In a nice bit of symmetry, my oldest son Tosh’s first game there came when he was 10 and I was 40. His first Brewers game was three years earlier, April 1994. I felt the great chain of being: As my father had done for me, I was doing for my children.
Perhaps the highlight of trying to teach my loves to my children came in September 1998, when I took all three—it was my daughter Hania’s first baseball game—to see the Cubs and Brewers at County Stadium. Surrounded by Cubs fans, we cheered, too, when Sammy Sosa, chasing Mark McGuire for the home run title, hit homers 64 and 65. But we cheered even louder when we won the game as the Cubs (bless them) committed a three-run error in the bottom of the ninth.
And that’s when I knew where my sympathies lay—I’d been using “Brewers” and “we” interchangeably.
But my kids are modern kids, and for a while, baseball lost its allure for them. They thought it too slow; they had other things to do. I went to a lot of games with friends, not my kids. I missed having them there, but then, I’d also encouraged their interest in sports, and how could I complain that they would rather play sports than watch them? An avid cyclist, I understand. Soccer, swim team, volleyball, cross country—I drove them to their practices, attended a thousand games, matches and meets. It was a joy seeing their joy, their determination, their being so entirely themselves, striving, reaching, winning, losing. I loved to watch them play.
I just had to accept that they weren’t quite as passionate about baseball as I was. That trip to Wrigley with Tosh — it wasn’t the Cubs so much that mattered that day as it was baseball and being with my son. I still get choked up when James Earl Jones sonorously declares in Field of Dreams: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”
Hope springs eternal. And maybe some of it did rub off. Two days after Tosh got married, with all the relatives still in town, he and his bride and a whole bunch of us went to a Brewers’ game, the last big family gathering before everyone scattered. There they are, Tosh and Elizabeth, beaming in their Brewers shirts. It was family. It was baseball. And with any luck, I’ll be going to games with them and my grandkids about a decade hence. Play ball!
Lake Effect contributor CJ Hribal is a Milwaukee writer and Marquette University professor.
