I don’t spend much time on sports. My weakness is baseball. All the years I lived in Indianapolis, probably because I could get WGN on TV, I became a Cubs fan. Frustrated not only by their failures, but also by the owners willingness to sell off some of their best players as the team began to threaten to break from their bad reputation. This was a team that had Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston, Andre Dawson and such star pitchers as Greg Maddox and the infuriating Rick Sutcliffe, who had the pitching pace of a turtle. They also had the incredible Lee Smith as a closer.
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| Lee Smith |
I liked the Cubs enough to make them a staple in my Shanahan
mystery series. They were constantly on TV at Delaney’s bar on Tenth Street in
Indianapolis and continued to dominate the place when Shanahan’s pal, Harry
bought the bar. Shanahan often sat at the bar with a bottle of “The Champagne
of Bottled Beer” and a shot of J.W. Dant Bourbon with crack of the bat and the
roar of the crowd in the background. I watched a lot of games too.
I have to confess that I lost touch with Cubs, mostly
because I moved to San Francisco and got caught up with Giants, but also the
Cubs weren’t the Cubs I knew anyway. I hate the lack of loyalty, or perhaps
continuity, when players don’t play out their career with one team. One thinks of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra,
Stan Musial and Ted Williams. I could never come to terms with Greg Maddox
playing for Atlanta.
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| Ryne Sandberg |
This year I rooted for the Giants when they were the wild
card and were pitted against the Cubs. But now that this is decided, it’s time
to make a nostalgic move and root for the Cubs in the World Series. Maybe I’ll
haul out my first Shanahan book, TheStone Veil, published in 1989, when the Cubs also had a great team, but
just couldn’t pull it all together.
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