As a lifelong Cubs fan I wanted to warn everyone who isn’t, about the surge of “100 Years of Futility” columns and stories you’ll be bombarded with over the next several months. The non-believers among you will quickly tire of them. Cubs faithful however love to immerse themselves in misery, finding strange comfort in the knowledge they root for the most notorious losers in the history of American sports. Most of us will watch and read all of it, no matter how trivial or mean-spirited.You can bet columnists at the Sun-times and Chicago Tribune are already tripping over themselves, trying to write the definitive commentary on the subject. The Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti has been making allusions to it for the last couple of years. The guy must be licking his chops now that the time has finally come and lame-duck owners at the rival Tribune Co. have spent even more of their money in one last, desperate attempt to bring a World Championship to the north side. Mariotti takes special pleasure in going after both of the cities’ baseball teams. Ozzie Guillen has been his favorite target lately, but there’s enough venom in his typing fingers to gleefully document the end of this disastrous Cubs century while still giving Ozzie the business.

No doubt they’ll be getting in on the act all over the country. ESPN will produce their version for a slow day on Sports Center. HBO may commission a documentary. Expect FOX Sports to mix vintage footage with the flash and glitz they’re known for. When the Cubs roll in to each major league city on their 2008 schedule, the local media can get in their perspective as well. After all, columnists are always looking for new material to grind out their daily pieces. This is the sport’s writer equivalent of a gimme.

You’ll see all the same elements: last World Series Championship (1908) last appearance in a World Series (1945) most excruciating 6 weeks in baseball history (1969) biggest play-off choke (tie between 1984 and 2003 playoffs), the goat, the black cat in Shea Stadium, Bartman.

The writer most qualified to chronicle this epoch of ineptitude is no longer with us.
Mike Royko covered Chicago like no one else. His beat was politics, corruption, crime, organized crime, the pleasure of a Vienna Beef hot dog, and the beer-and-a -shot guy that populated all the same haunts he frequented. Crusty and cantankerous as he was, Royko had a soft spot for the Cubs and would occasionally take time away from commenting on mob bosses and politicos to make observations about the latest Cubs failure or rare moment of triumph. His most infamous column on the team may have helped lead to their undoing in 1984. As Cubs Nation seemed on the verge of celebrating the National League Championship, up 2-0 to the San Diego Padres, Royko taunted San Diego fans, referring to them as “beach wimps”. Well, the wimps screamed from the first inning of Game 3 and didn’t stop until the Padres won three straight at home, taking the series and breaking millions of Cubby blue hearts in the process.

Of course there’ll be some lame songs written too. Now days anyone with a laptop can do that and post it on youtube. Steve Goodman would have been the guy for that job. Of course he’s long gone too. Goodman, who wrote the beautiful folk/pop classic “City of New Orleans” also penned “Go Cubs Go” (still a fan favorite) and “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”. Born three years after the Cubs won their last National League Championship, Goodman died on September 20th, 1984 just days before Rick Sutcliffe struck out Joe Orsulak in Three Rivers Stadium earning them what would have been their only title of any kind in his lifetime. Talk about futility. But Goodman might have been the lucky one. He didn’t have to endure seeing the smirk on Steve Garvey’s face as he rounded the bases after taking Lee Smith deep for the winner in Game 4 of the NLCS, or the site of Leon Durham’s imitation of a croquet wicket at first base the following day. That error opened the floodgates for the Padres comeback win of the game and the series.

So brace yourself. It’s still only spring training and every Cubs preview I’ve read so far has played the “100 years of futility” card. If you’re a baseball fan, good luck to your team in’08. For those of us who pull for the club that’s seen nothing but bad luck over the previous 99 years, don’t worry about us. We’ll be devouring every last bit of prose, poetry, music, audio and video we can find on our lovable losers and enjoying every second of it. Besides, there’s always next century.