CUBS FANS GET PHILISOPHICAL
There is no shortage of Cubs guidebooks. There are reference books that will tally the Cubs wild pitches, blown saves, and men left-on-base; there are others that catalogue the best spots to chug beer and ogle women. But how about one to find happiness? In “The Cubs Fan’s Guide to Happiness,” George Ellis, a 29 year old copywriter for Leo Burnett and longtime Cubs fan, gets philosophical.
If believers of a Cubs curse can have so much faith in a goat manipulating the forces of the baseball universe, based on a hex from a Greek man whose expertise is grilling raw meat, than perhaps Cubs fans can find solace in another Greek—Aristotle. He said, “We are what we repeatedly do.”
For Cubs and Cubs fans, that means losing. Does that make us losers? Let’s do what the philosophers do and consider the arguments.
Ellis would turn to Scottish philosopher David Hume to counter Aristotle’s argument that failing makes us failures.
He writes: David Hume thought it erroneous to assume that since something has always happened the same way that it will continue to do so. Just because the sun has risen every day since the beginning of the earth, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will rise again tomorrow. There’s simply no definitive proof.
First of all, if the sun fails to come up tomorrow, middle-relief will be the least of our problems. But what Hume might argue, is that just because the Cubs have had a bad century doesn’t mean the Cubs won’t go 162-0. The future is not bound to the past.
OK sure, but you have to consider the degree of probability. Einstein said “God doesn’t roll dice.” Meaning that if Jim Hendry drafted 9 guys from the Chicago School of Massage, the forces of nature would not be with the Cubs.
Where we’d both agree is that reflecting on data from previous years, as baseball broadcast producers love to do, is useless. What Leo Durocher did not do in 1967, or what Tinker, Evers and chance did do in 1908 has absolutely, positively nothing to do with Kerry Wood or Lou Pinella.
Hume offers relief in endorsing Ellis’ optimism: The TANY philosophy---There’s Always Next Year. It’s healthy---not just for Cubs fan but for everyone. Acknowledging that you always have another 162 games, or another day to fix your own personal miscues, gives us hope that things can always be better (assuming the sun does rise again tomorrow. )
“Okay, it sounds silly, but I've found that the more I joke about the "There's Always Next Year" philosophy, the more I start to believe it,” Ellis said. “It's about not getting down on yourself after one failure, because there really is no reason you can't be successful next time. Unless you're a total loser, of course.”
In the meantime, there’s always beer. Plato said “He was a wise man who invented beer.”
Ellis’ next philosophical mantra is Beer Will Make it Better.” Well, it won’t make anyone play better, unless we put a keg in the Cards dugout and then maybe the Cubs would look good by comparison. More realistically, it just might numb our pain---although if you’re drinking Old Style, it may take 18 beers.
A more responsible reading might be that beer is just part of the fun, and that is not a trivial thing.
Ellis notes that French existentialist author Albert Camus that it’s the process that gives meaning. Afterall, you win the World Series, and you feel good—there’s a parade---you buy a t-shirt---and then you know what? It’s back to work. So in the end, enjoy the process of cheering, drinking, crying, drinking, and making new friends at the friendly confines.
Which brings us back to the Greeks to find meaning in all this.
“Happiness is something final and complete in itself,” Aristotle said. “As being the aim and end of all practical activities.”
For Cubs fans, baseball is a religion. Faith brings them back. For the secular, happiness is the aim of life, which is found in the optimism of spring, the sounds and smells of Wrigley in the summer, and in the fall, the consolation that Cubs convention is only a few months away.