Today In Originality: Mike Hunt Thinks the Cubs Are Chokers

September 14th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Let’s get this out of the way: regular readers of my stuff know I’m a Cubs fan. If you know me even better than that, you know that I take umbrage to lame stereotypes of fan bases, i.e. “Cubs fans are all fratty party types,” or “White Sox fans are all poor,” or “Marlins fans don’t exist,” or whatever else. Baseball fans are baseball fans; baseball teams are baseball teams. Even when they don’t exist, like Marlins fans.

Unfortunately, in a blanant quest to please the hometown lackeys and fling a little mud southward, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist has done the bravest thing a sportswriter can do — call the Cubs chokers:

Yet in a Brewers-Cubs sprint to the finish, so many other factors will trump schedules as the determiner.

In fact, it says right here that the Brewers will win.

Interesting. Because it says right here that the teams have an almost-identical chance of making the playoffs.

Historically speaking, only Constantinople has collapsed more than the Cubs. Everybody knows that, above all the Cubs. The pressure will be so immense that they will actually expect a tragic flaw - a Bartman, a Zambrano, a large chunk of concrete from the decaying pit in which they play, something - to befall them.

First of all, in like 2,000 years, Constantinople has been sacked (yes, I just used the word “sacked”) like two or three times. Three! In two millenia! Couldn’t you go with, I don’t know, Jerusalem or something? Strike one, Mike Hunt.

Strike two would probably be assuming that because Moises Alou flipped out on some poor headphone-clad random in 2003 even though Alou had no shot at getting his piss-stained hands on that foul ball — and then Alex Gonzalez booted the key play at short a few pitches later — that something similar will happen this year. If you think about it nice and hard, you’ll realize that’s a totally ridiculous thing to say.

Strike three is making fun of Wrigley Field.

In the last five years, the Cubs have invested something like $800 million on player salaries, with virtually nothing to show for it. The Brewers have spent about one-fourth of that and now find themselves in a pennant race with a franchise approaching a Yankees-Red Sox level of fiscal restraint. Mega-salaries don’t render all ballplayers complacent but we’ll find out in the final run if the Cubs will again trip over their wallets.

Ah, yes, the overpaid prima donna corollary. It’s like Hunt came up with a checklist of what would make Brewers fans happy when they picked up their papers this morning:

1. Call the Cubs chokers
2. Make fun of how old Wrigley Field is
3. Use benign and vaguely incorrect historical references
4. Call the Cubs complacent, whiny millionaires while making it very clear that most Brewers are merely milloinaires
5. For giggles’ sake, shorten my first name from Michael to Mike

But if betting on a big-league team to choke down the stretch, doesn’t it follow that it would be the one with the big “C” on their uniforms?

What’s sort of funny is that if you want to talk about “choking,” weren’t the Brewers up like nine games early in the season? Haven’t they already, by any reasonable extension of your definition, choked?

I wouldn’t want to say that, naturally. No reasonable writer would play the choke card and pander to the home fans that readily, not unless he was desperate for a little acceptance after a lifetime of Amanda Hugandkiss jokes. Surely not, right, Mike Hunt?

(Guffaws)